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With her plan to close D.C. General facing significant opposition, Mayor Muriel Bowser defended the proposal in a wide-ranging interview on NewsTalk this morning.

“It’s too big, too old, not safe enough,” Bowser told Bruce DePuyt. “Closing DC General is probably the hardest thing I will do as mayor, and it is also something that residents charged me to do.”

In addition to neighborhood-level opposition, a coalition of nearly 60 groups sent a letter recently that strongly criticizes elements of the mayor’s proposal, singling out the Ward 5 site as “inappropriate for children” and the costs of leasing much of the required land as particularly problematic. “We have an opportunity here to do it right and do it once,” the DC Fair Budget Coalition letter reads.

In response, Bowser spokesman Michael Czin told WAMU that the administration isn’t willing to change those elements of the plan. “While we appreciate the D.C. Fair Budget Coalition’s support for closing D.C. General, the proposals in their petition would needlessly delay efforts to close the facility and drive up costs,” he said.

On NewsTalk, Bowser suggested that the opposition might have been less intense had the replacement shelters been concentrated in on area. “A cynic might say that if I had suggested putting these facilities in one ward, it might have floated through the Council,” the mayor said, adding: “I feel very good that we presented a citywide solution.”

She also addressed her new push for statehood, reminding viewers that “we pay more taxes than many states in the union” (22 to be exact); Metro’s troubles (“the information asymmetry between the board members and the staff is huge”); and her $15 minimum wage legislation, which differs from a proposed ballot initiative because it includes a lower wage for tipped workers.

Bowser’s plan would see the wage increase incrementally until hitting $15 in 2020; tipped workers would see their base wage go up to $7.50 by 2022. “Most tipped workers make more than $15,” Bowser said. “I’m concerned about what would happen if we eliminated tips.”

Meanwhile, a coalition has been working on a ballot initiative for over a year that proposes raising the wage for tipped workers to $15 by 2024—setting up dueling legislative proposals. “We want to do away with the two-tiered minimum wage system that oppresses people that work for tips,” Delvone Michael, the executive director of DC Working Families and a co-chair of DC for $15, told DCist last this month.

The mayor also addressed the looming decision about what will be done with the RFK site once D.C. United decamps for Buzzard Point. Events DC presented three overarching plans to residents last month, which included a 65,000 seat NFL stadium, a 20,000-seat arena, and “no anchor.”

The “elephant in the room,” as Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen put it, has long been whether or not there would be a new NFL stadium on the spot. With opposition from the Department of the Interior over the name and other factors making that increasingly unlikely, the administration seems to be pinning their hopes for a shiny new stadium in the form of a smaller arena.

“The truth is at some point [the Verizon Center] is going to need significant updating,” Bowser said, adding the owners will have to decide whether or not to make the upgrades or build another new facility (formerly known as the MCI Center, the Verizon Center opened in 1997) for the Wizards and the Capitals.