(Bloomberg) -- New York City Mayor Eric Adams defended his record on crime on Wednesday, wrapping up his first year in office amid a 25% rise in major felonies through November.

The top-line number doesn’t tell the whole story, Adams said, as he highlighted double-digit drops in the high-profile murders and shootings that left the city on edge in recent years.

Adams, 62, was elected in 2021 on a cornerstone promise that the former police captain was uniquely suited to turn around a pandemic-induced spike in violence that alarmed New Yorkers after more than 20 years of declining crime rates. Overall, crime remains at decades lows, but the increase of incidents has weighed on the city’s economic recovery — and its psyche.

“My top priority will always be improving the safety of this city. Everything else will be built on that safety,” Adams said on the steps of City Hall’s marble rotunda at a press conference he called to tout signs of progress in the city’s public safety. “New Yorkers should feel better about the direction we are headed.”

Adams, who graded his first year as a B+ earlier in the day, highlighted a decrease in shooting incidents, a 27-year high in gun arrests, hundreds more cops patrolling a transit system where incidents rose 29% from a year ago, and a renewed focus on mental health.

Read More: NYC Mayor Adams Defends Plan to Clear Mentally Ill From Streets

He then said the city doesn’t get the credit it deserves from the media and shifted blame to what he called flaws in a criminal justice system that isn’t aggressive enough.

 “We can’t over-emphasize the repeat offenders,” Adams said. “They believe our criminal justice system is a joke.”

Limited Record

Nearly a year into his term, the mayor has introduced an unrelenting stream of new initiatives around law enforcement, reengaged the city’s business community, and declared war on the city’s rat population. He restored the city’s gifted and talented public school program after former Mayor Bill de Blasio said it favored rich, White New Yorkers and dismantled it.

But critics say Adams’s record on fulfilling campaign promises on crime, the economy and the city budget has been limited. 

“You can raise an issue, but then you have to own it and you have to deliver on solutions,” said Insha Rahman, a vice president at the Vera Institute of Justice.

“What Eric Adams did so successfully for people on the campaign trail is acknowledge that safety matters,” she said. But now that he’s a year into office, she said the mayor is responsible for producing the fixes necessary to put residents at ease. 

Wednesday’s media gaggle highlighted how Adams, who regularly dons hats, face masks and other merchandise emblazoned with his signature slogan “Get Stuff Done,” uses a well-crafted, 24/7 public relations campaign to tout what he plans to accomplish even when there aren’t yet measurable results to show from new policies, laws or programs.

“I think for the first year the things he’s trying to do, the number of announcements he’s made, is unusual,” said Sid Davidoff, who worked for former Mayor John Lindsay and has had an insider’s view of every New York mayor in the 56 years since. 

Davidoff said he gives Adams credit for his energy level and his willingness to take on issues previous mayors found intractable but that “overexposure is an issue that he’s got to be careful of. It’s his first year.”

“We get the headlines every day. But is the city cleaner? Is the city traffic better now that we’re coming out of the pandemic?” Davidoff said. “Is he doing the job that’s necessary? That’s going to take some time.”

Read More: Wanted: NYC Rat Czar. Will Offer Salary as High as $170,000

Budget and Finances

During the mayor’s race, Adams promised to get Rikers Island under control and pledged to meet a 2026 deadline to close the jail complex. But since taking office, the Rikers population swelled to more than 5,700 people from less than 4,000 during the pandemic. The city spends about half a million dollars per incarcerated person per year, according to the comptroller’s office. 

Adams is fighting against a federal takeover of the facility, where 19 people have died this year, the highest rate in 25 years, as violent and dangerous conditions persist. On Wednesday, Adams said it was “just the beginning of a turnaround at Rikers” and praised the correction department for reducing staff absenteeism. He said the local press should write more about what a good job the department has done.

Read More: Rikers Critics Urge US Takeover of NYC Jail as Deaths Continue

Despite a campaign promise by Adams to cut the New York City Police Department overtime spending by 50% in his first year in office, the department is on pace to double overtime spending in the fiscal year, according to the city Comptroller’s office.

Overtime has increased as Adams adds more transit shifts and has to make up for a wave of officer resignations this year, more than at any time in the past two decades. “This false story that people don’t want to be police officers — it’s just not true,” he said when asked about the departures on Wednesday.

The city has spent $272 million on NYPD overtime through November, weighing on an already tight budget cycle in which the mayor has had to mandate spending cuts across all departments and reduce funding to schools, libraries and nonprofits. 

Adams is “slashing and burning city government,” said Brooklyn Council Member Lincoln Restler during a budget hearing this month where progressive lawmakers said the mayor is largely neglecting social services through staff attrition.

The so-called Program to Eliminate the Gap, which required agencies to cut 3% to 5% of their budgets, has seen mixed results. Only 18 of 25 mayoral agencies have met their cost-cutting targets, falling short by $500 million, and some agencies have been using budget gimmickry to inflate future cost projections and come in under new targets, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. 

“There are some savings that we have called illusory, in that they have basically added spending and then turned around and taken savings,” said Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission.

Incremental cost-cutting alone is unlikely to close what the mayor’s budget office projects to be a $6 billion budget gap by 2026. If the mayor doesn’t get the billions in federal support to help deal with an influx of tens of thousands of migrants into the city, the comptroller’s office expects the budget gap to stretch beyond $8 billion. 

Adams has warned of further cuts to city services if the federal government doesn’t reimburse the city $1 billion for expenses related to asylum seekers arriving from Central and South America via border states like Texas and Arizona.

“I’m not sure if people realize it, but we have a fiscal crisis,” he said on Wednesday. “We got hit with a serious crisis — not only with the pandemic, but with the influx of migrants. If we’re not fiscally responsible, we’re not going to have the resources we need to run the city.”

Read More: NYC Budget Gap to Exceed Mayor’s Forecast, Comptroller Says

Economy and Jobs

Adams promised to create 70,000 jobs in his first year in office and has far exceeded that goal, with 183,000 more jobs than when he started.

But the city is still lags the rest of the US. Employment remains below pre-pandemic levels and growth is slowing. The city lost jobs month-over-month in October for the first time since April 2020.

New York City’s economy is highly sensitive to the finance and tourism sectors, which tend to do worse in a downturn, Wall Street bonuses are already drying up. Covid, RSV and flu cases are again rising as sickness keeps people home and return-to-office plans stagnate. About 48% of employees in the New York metro area are going into offices, compared with 64% in Austin, Texas, according to data from Kastle Systems.

Adams remains optimistic. “Every day new industries are opening, our startups are growing here in the city,” he told Bloomberg this month. 

Read More: New York Risks Losing Wealthiest Residents If Taxes Keep Rising

About 50% of New York City registered voters had a favorable impression of Adams in a Siena College poll this month, compared with 35% unfavorable. That compares with 62% for President Joe Biden and 61% for Senator Chuck Schumer. The poll had a margin of error of 5 percentage points. 

Three years away from a likely run for re-election, Adams is asking voters not to judge him too harshly as his first year in office comes to an end.

“As I keep saying, 2022 was my rookie year. 2023 is my Aaron Judge year,” he said this week in the Bronx, referring to the New York Yankees outfielder and the current American League most valuable player. 

(Updates with information throughout about the economy, migrants and budget.)

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