Mayor Bill de Blasio announced walk-up vaccination locations for seniors will increase from three to 25 sites on Tuesday as well as growth of a fleet of buses and vans that will be out in the streets giving out jabs to New Yorkers.
New Yorkers 75 and older can simply walk up to vaccination the 25 sites across the city instead of having to book an appointment and wait, a decision which coincides with the universal eligibility for anyone over 16 years old as authorized by embattled Governor Andrew Cuomo.
But the larger scope of the mayor’s presser was a recovery plan inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal; the administration plans to create 10,000 jobs through community cleanup programs meant to whip the city into shape after a year in pandemic.
“It’s all going to depend, of course, on exactly when everyone comes on board, but our goal is to hire up as quickly as possible, get this in gear this spring this summer so you really feel the impact,” de Blasio said. “I think you’re gonna see a whole lot activity in this city this summer and a huge amount of outdoor activity cultural activity open restaurants open streets, we want that whole situation beautified and then especially for the, for the fall for September, we expect lots of businesses to reopen lots of workers to come back, schools coming back full force. But we’ll get to the exact dollar figure as it develops.”
Workers will get paid $15 an hour, and while there is not an exact projection for total cost of the Clean Up Corps that will set these efforts in motion, the de Blasio believes vaccinations levels in the city are moving forward fast enough prompt preparations for a good summer.
Some of the primary jobs of the Clean Up Corps will be dealing with graffiti and as the program launches today with an initial hiring wave of 1,000 people and with it coming into full swing by July.
The de Blasio administration’s vaccination goal was also to reach 5 million administered doses by the July, but with the current tally at 4.6 million as of Tuesday, the mayor said it’s more likely that they will hit that benchmark by next week.
The Clean Up Corps marks city coming a long way from where it was in September when the Mayor de Blasio was forced to consider cutting 22,000 municipal jobs at a period when the five boroughs were still reeling from health crisis reaching its pinnacle over a summer of unrest that resulted from the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Since then, New York City has been green-lighted to receive $6 billion through the federal American Rescue Plan which will be delivered to without filtering through Albany.
