Adams has great ideas for New York, but he risks missing out on problem #1: crime.

This is the state of the city. . . long. Mayor Eric Adams spoke for more than an hour Thursday, moving proposal after proposal to voters, commissioners and the media at the Queens Theatre. Many of the small-scale initiatives presented by the mayor are decent enough, but he risks losing sight of what brought him to the party: crime.

Adams is rightly mindful of the budgetary constraints he faces as he launches his second-year ideas. Just like during the 2021 campaign, and like last year, he still doesn’t have a mega project to his name.

It’s a big contrast to his predecessors: Bill de Blasio had a pre-K, and Mike Bloomberg had a bunch of stuff, including delivering the 7 train to Manhattan’s far west.

This is fine. Lots of big ideas are bad, and there’s nothing wrong with pursuing lots of small ideas. Phonological reading in schools instead of experimental approaches that don’t work; assistance to people with disabilities in finding employment; minor zoning changes to add housing; more aggressive pursuit of bad drivers; “fewer rats” is all good.

And Adams seems to be killing his predecessor’s ill-conceived plan, now worth more than $10 billion, with four prisons, by simply ignoring it completely – also a good development.

However, as with his budget presentation this month, the biggest problem of the second year is that the mayor is losing the relentless focus on reducing crime that brought him to the mayor’s office in the first place.

Adams didn’t even get into crime until he unscrewed his barrel screw. “We have already made real progress,” the mayor said. “Last quarter saw a drop in shootings, homicides and serious crime for the first time in six quarters.”

Yes – sort of. Adams cut his homicide rate from 488 in 2021 to 433 last year, down 11%.

Down is better than up. But consider the contrast with the last mayor to be in office for crime: Rudy Giuliani. In his first year in office, Giuliani reduced the city’s homicide rate by as much as 20%, to 1,561 homicides that year, the lowest level in a decade.

And it was after homicides have been falling for three years now. The following year, 1995, the homicide rate dropped another 25%, and in the final year the homicide rate topped 1,000 (at least for now).

Adams didn’t come close to that momentum in his first year. And in the first three weeks of January, the killings are exactly on par with last year. These rates will not bring us back to pre-COVID homicide rates, between 292 and 319 per year from 2017 to 2019.

Adams’ new approach is to tackle repeat offenders: “an estimated 1,700 known criminals who are responsible for a disproportionate number of violent crimes.”

Violent sociopaths are set free again and again, mainly due to government changes in the criminal code. But Adams still won’t quite recall Albany: he only wants lawmakers to “find reasonable, fact-based solutions.”

Adams also doesn’t have a solid grasp of New York City’s plight: 1,400 illegal marijuana shops. His caveat: “If you think you’re going to come into our communities without a license, put our kids at risk, and steal jobs from people trying to do it right, you must be smoking something” sounds hollow considering you you can’t walk many blocks in any direction without coming across an illegal marijuana shop.

And here is Adams returned a mild criticism he leveled at Albany last week in a speech to business leaders. “I really want to take my hat off to the state legislators” for their marijuana laws, he said this Thursday, although last Thursday he blamed the laws for the city’s failure to shut down illegal smokers.

What he?

Finally, Adams continues to falter when it comes to the migration crisis.

This week, he toyed with the idea that tens of thousands of migrants who are hesitant to seek asylum not eligibility for automatic asylum in New York. However, in a speech on Thursday, he promised: “We will continue to do our part. . . . We will continue to take care of the newcomers.”

Again, what is it? The mayor just pulled another high-end downtown Midtown hotel, the Paramount, for migrant housing, literally wiping out hotel taxes, as well as food and drink taxes the city levied on properties.

“We’re just getting started,” Adams said Thursday. No, not anymore – and Adams needs to focus better on what really matters.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor for the City Journal of the Manhattan Institute.