After coming under fire for saying the city should consider ripping up the pedestrian plaza in Times Square to crack down on aggressive panhandlers, Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying to turn the page. He promoted a public housing roof repair program today, but the Times Square controversy is nevertheless dogging him. NY1 reporter Grace Rauh has the story.

It is a feel-good announcement for residents at the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City: City Hall is spending $300 million dollars to put new roofs on public housing buildings across the city.

"We are going to the heart of the matter and fixing one of the biggest problems that our residents have faced for a long time," said Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The roof repairs, however, aren't exactly new news–NY1 reported on the work being done atop Queensbridge buildings back in June.

Instead, the announcement really may have been about giving the mayor a chance to talk about something other than Times Square. He generated headlines and fierce opposition last week after announcing the creation of a Times Square task force.

He said it would be coming up with ways to regulate topless women and others posing for pictures there in exchange for tips, adding that opening up the Times Square pedestrian plaza to cars would be on the table.

"This is a proposal that is going to be looked at. I think we can safely say to there has been some portrayal of this as a fait accompli. I didn't say that nor did anyone else," he said.

Pedestrian advocates, local politicians and others were quick to criticize the idea. Some argued that turning the plaza back into roadway would fly in the face of the mayor's own pedestrian safety program.

"We drove down pedestrian fatalities to the lowest level since 1910 last year. It is actually lower again this year," the mayor said.

De Blasio also tried to downplay the significance of his own professed discomfort with the topless women that seemed to have triggered the creation of this taskforce in the first place.

"This is about a business and people making money and doing it in a way that obviously comes with problems, so we want to regulate it properly," he said.

The task force is expected to report back with its recommendations by October 1.