"As a surgeon you know I’m used to cutting things, so I’m glad that to cut the ribbon," said Ben Carson.

Ben Carson, the Secretary for Housing and Urban Development was in East Harlem on Wednesday to celebrate the opening of a new Envision Center — the first bilingual location of its kind.

"I'm happy to announce that HUD will be donating more than 600 books to the Taino Towers Envision Center," said Carson.

Carson’s visit comes a day after NYCHA Chair Greg Russ made comments about the authority’s growing price tag for repairs. NYCHA is in need of $40 billion for repairs, up from $32 billion two years ago. The growing price tag did not seem to concern Carson, who blamed the authority’s problems on poor management.

"Everybody always says throw more money at the problem that will solve it. That does not solve it; the problem is with management, with maintenance," said Carson.

He also voiced support for a controversial program known as RAD. The City has already committed to converting 62,000 apartments over to private management in order to raise money for repairs.

"It's beautiful, I had a chance to talk to the people, the people they're very happy and it's an example of what can be done," said Carson.

Meanwhile at the City Council, NYCHA's federal monitor made his first appearance on Wednesday, nearly a year after the federal government stepped in for a partial takeover of the beleaguered housing authority.

“This is my first winter with NYCHA and dealing with the NYCHA issues," said Bart Schwartz, NYCHA federal monitor.

Members grilled NYCHA authorities about heat and hot water outages at public housing across the city.

Officials had some progress to report.

There's been a 73 percent reduction in the amount it takes for NYCHA to restore heat outages. From 30 hours in 2017 through 2018 down to just 8 hours in 2018 through 2019.

"Also the number of outages has been reduced," said Greg Russ.

Whether NYCHA has made real progress to fix its persistent heating outages remains to be seen, the end of heating season runs until May 31st.