I got to spend Tuesday morning with an extraordinary New Yorker, Annie Davis.

Annie is like many New Yorkers who, in good times and bad, whether life is easy or difficult, get up and go to work, every day, without complaint. She punches her alarm clock, and her time clock, each day. Lots of people do it, but that doesn't make it easy.

Each morning, Annie, a mother of six, a grandmother to 12, and a great-grandmother twice over, leaves her home in East New York, Brooklyn. She walks to the B13 bus, which takes her to the A train, which leaves her several blocks away from the building where she works as a private security guard. Her commute takes over an hour, each way. After working an eight-hour shift protecting a building that houses the City's Health Department, Annie faces another long ride home.

Annie is a member of Local 32BJ, one of the city's great private sector unions. I got to spend the morning with her as part of the union's "Walk a Day in My Shoes" campaign. My morning with Annie reminded me of something that I think about every day when I talk to New Yorkers in neighborhoods across the city - these are the people that make New York function and allow it to be the greatest city in the world.

Over the past seven and a half years, I have worked hard to create jobs, improve public health and access to health care, fix our schools, reduce crime, and improve our quality of life. We have made real progress on all of these fronts, and I encourage you to click the "Mike's Record" tab on this website to learn more about what we have accomplished.

I am particularly proud of how my administration has helped private sector security guards like Annie. Four years ago, the leaders of 32BJ brought to my attention the fact that many City buildings were being protected by untrained and under-paid workers. We worked to address both issues. First, we created a training program called New York Safe & Secure which brought together government, labor and business to increase training for private sector security personnel. Second, and most importantly, we started to look at the companies that were getting the security contracts and, if they were bad actors, we removed them.

If you're not a private security guard, you may not have heard about these initiatives. But these efforts have had a positive impact on the lives of the thousands of New Yorkers who work in this industry. And these security guards play a pivotal role in keeping all eight million of us safe. They are on the front lines, guarding some of New York's largest and most storied buildings, so it made sense that the City ensure that they are well-paid, well-trained, and well-treated.

Yet there's much more to be done. Right now, New Yorkers are going through some difficult times. The nation's economy is in recession and everyone is feeling the pain in one way or another.

Despite this adversity, I am working hard every day to make life a little easier, and our city a little stronger, for people like Annie. That's why I plan to balance one of the largest deficits in the City's history without cutting vital services or laying off teachers, fire fighters or police officers. And that's why I am moving full speed ahead with my plan to provide workforce retraining, foreclosure assistance, and to create or save 400,000 jobs. To me, that ambitious number is not an abstraction. It is the path out of this recession for families in East New York, the Upper West Side, the South Shore, North Riverdale and Middle Village. It is the key to a better present and a strong future for the Annie Davises of New York City.