 Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm Jonathan Massey, Dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning here at the University of Michigan, and I'm delighted to welcome you to Taubman College's third annual event featuring U.S. mayors. And to share with you that this year we are partnering with the Big Ten Collaboration Democracy in the 21st Century in order to bring together mayors from cities across the states of the Big Ten Conference and Academic Alliance. At Taubman College, as architects and urban planners, urban designers, and urban technologists, we focus a lot on the role of municipal leaders in shaping the direction of our nation on issues like climate change, housing, social equity, racial justice. Leadership at the municipal level is also key in making forward motion on infrastructure, transportation, economic opportunity, and so many other dimensions of our lives. So we have hosted events with mayors of cities both large and small, near and far. All of them, though, have been innovating and iterating on pressing issues that have local significance, but also national and international ramifications. Today's civic leaders, the folks joining us today, are all advancing long-term and big-picture agendas, while also responding tactically, as mayors have to, to emergent crises and very specifically local dynamics. Collaborations such as this take a lot of coordination and effort. And so a special thanks to colleagues at the following institutions who've worked with us and with today's mayors to make our event possible. I'd like to thank the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Chicago, the Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, the School of Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Iowa, the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy here at University of Michigan, and finally, oh, and also the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy at University of Michigan. And finally, the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at the Ohio State University. With me here today to open this conversation that explores the agency of mayors in matters of national significance is my own mayor and our mayor, Christopher Taylor. We're joined, as you can see behind us by members of the University of Michigan community who are here at Talman College with us. And I'd like to say hello also to those of you at similar watch parties at other Big Ten institutions. Christopher, Mayor Taylor, welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. And good afternoon. I am delighted to welcome all of you, those here in the room and those watching virtually to Ann Arbor and to the University of Michigan. As mayor of Ann Arbor, I understand the crucial role that local municipalities play in addressing some of our nation's most important issues. Climate justice, housing, urban, and social equity. All within the context of having the pleasure and duty of providing and improving basic services and enhancing quality of life for every member of the community every single day. As mayor of a university city, I deeply appreciate the role that universities play in this project. The development of leaders and data and solutions to mitigate the problems we face and cultivate the communities and opportunities that we devise. As a graduate of the University of Michigan, I'm particularly delighted to welcome Big Ten Group here dedicated to the education and success of our future leaders. The breadth of my studies here at the University of Michigan, and I do have four degrees in the university, which either shows a love of learning or distressing lack of strategic thinking. It has taught me the value of collaboration, shared experiences, sharing experiences about our success and our challenge. It allows us to work creatively towards solutions. We learn best when we work together, when we work with humility and open minds to understand the world, ourselves, and each other. An inquiry that is at the heart of every true university. I am delighted to welcome fellow mayors and colleagues here to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, and very much look forward to the discussion and learning from you all. Thanks. Thank you, Mayor Taylor. So joining our panel discussion today are four mayors. Mike Duggan, the mayor of the city of Detroit currently serving his third term. Laurie Lightfoot, mayor of Chicago and a University of Michigan alum with a degree in political science. Aftab Pureval, mayor of Cincinnati, who attended the Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati College of Law. And Bruce Teague, mayor of Iowa City and graduate of the University of Iowa. The conversation will be moderated by Paul Helmke, professor of practice at Indiana University's O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Paul is also a former three term mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana. And the founding director of the Civic Leaders Center, former president of the US Conference of Mayors. And a perfect moderator for our conversation today by virtue of his expertise and experience. We'll start the discussion with Paul asking our panelists to address some of the biggest topics in our cities today. And then we will bring in the audience questions from across our Big Ten collaboration institutions. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Mayor. All the mayors that are here today, it's always great to be with mayors and have a discussion on the issues that are facing our communities. I always indicate and as mayors know that they're on the front lines and dealing with the problems, others have the chance to pontificate, take votes, take positions and just disclaim, reclaim responsibility when things go wrong or when things go good. They take responsibility regardless of how they voted it seems. Mayors are there. Mayors are the ones doing the real work and so it's great to share some time with mayors. Let's get right to it. When one of the first questions I wanted to address is crime. Crime always gets a lot of attention as a local issue and people focus on it as a local issue, but it's really impacted by a number of factors that go beyond the control of a single city or a single mayor. Supreme Court decisions limit local options to restrict guns. Neighboring states with weak gun laws impact other communities. Interstate operations involve gangs and drugs. All of these things make an effective local response even harder. I know back in the 90s I worked with Mayor Daley of Chicago, Mayor Daley the Younger of Chicago, Mayor Archer of Detroit back in the 90s, along with folks like Senator Joe Biden to try to deal with these issues. It's an issue that continues to confound and frustrate our cities. Mayor Lightfoot, what sort of things can mayors or cities do to reduce gun violence and make our communities safer? Well, let me now begin by saying thank you for inviting me into I think this incredible conversation and happy always to participate in anything related to the University of Michigan and my fellow Big Ten schools. So I have to say go blue. But Mayor Hemke, I think you frankly in framing the question really exemplify the challenges that we face here in Chicago. We are our biggest challenge of public safety is gun violence. And we are just a wash in illegal guns. As of today, our police department has taken over 9,000 illegal guns off the street. We will probably break the record that we set last year, which is 12,000 guns, which just for context is double New York and LA combined. And it's not because we have a better strategy, although obviously we work diligently on these issues. It's because guns are pouring over the border from Indiana, from Wisconsin and other states that definitely have a different sensibility and different laws regarding the sale of guns, strong purchasing and enforcement. So what can we do given the circumstances? Well, I think you've got to play both the short and the long game. The short term means you've got to hold violent, dangerous people accountable. You've got to look at and use your data to identify the places where you're seeing the significant challenges. You've got to make sure the entire public safety ecosystem, that means not just the police and law enforcement, but the prosecutors and the court, you have to be aligned in a set of vision about what the challenges are and how each of you are going to step up and meet those challenges. Now, I will tell you, easier said than done. Chicago's not like New York City where we control the budget for the prosecutors, the courts, the jails. We, each of these entities in Chicago and Cook County, are run by independent organizations. So we've got to use our power of persuasion to get alignment. Sometimes we have it, sometimes we don't. But we really focus on, as I said, holding violent, dangerous people accountable. We want to make sure that we provide our residents with transparency around what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we're doing it, which is critically important because as you also know, and certainly my fellow mayors I would imagine would agree, that perception is just as important and palpable as reality. If people don't fundamentally feel safe, then you're losing the battle. And it's difficult to do in the current media climate that we're in right now, where to borrow the old phrase, if it leads, it leads with a 24 hour news cycle. And frankly, anybody who has a keyboard that thinks they're journalists now, it's difficult, I think, for mayors to get ahead of the curve. So making sure that we're telling our own story about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and being very transparent about it, I think it's also critically important and never forgetting in all of this that there are victims that are out there, there are witnesses and survivors, that their stories have to be told, their lives and their experiences also have to be uplifted. On the longer term, and I think you've got to do both and, you've got to look at the root causes of the violence. And in a city like Chicago, I'm convinced that a big part of our challenges really revolves around poverty. We've seen too many neighborhoods where violence is a persistent daily problem for residents that have been disinvested in for really a generation or longer. So making sure that we are investing and we're building relationships with a community that is, of course, deeply skeptical of our approach because they've heard it all before, they've seen it all before, but what they don't have is confidence that government is really going to be their partner. And let me just give you a short example of what we've done. We borrowed pages from our COVID response and we set up something called the Community Safety Coordination Center. And simply put, we literally brought everybody in city government who touches any aspect of community safety physically into the same room. So we've got obviously a police department is there, but we also have public health. We have our Department of Family Support Services. We've got our infrastructure department, our libraries, our parks, our schools, and everything in between. And we view the work that we do on a day-to-day basis through the lens of public safety and that we've invited our community partners in. We focused on 15 neighborhoods in our city that were driving over 50% of our violence. And as a consequence of this deep engagement, literally on a block-by-block basis, asking our residents, what do you need to be safe? We've seen remarkable progress. And again, I mean, no one's doing a victory lap, but I will share that overall this year, after historic highs in 2021, we are down 15% in homicides, almost 20% in shootings. And in those 15 neighborhoods where we really focused on flooding the area with a whole-of-government approach and resources, working hand in glove with our community partners, we're seeing 20, 30, and 40% reductions in both homicides and shootings. So I think we're on to something here, but we've got to keep focused on doing a long-term root cause analysis, but also making sure in the interim, we continue to do everything that we possibly can to make our residents feel safe because they are safe. Great answer. Any of the other mayors want to chime in real quickly on crime or guns? Anything different that you're doing or that you'd like to throw out there before we move on? Paul, I'll just weigh in very quickly. I wanted to really lift up what Mayor Lightfoot said about the causes of gun violence that we're seeing across the country. Here in Cincinnati, we just had a mass shooting just two weeks ago. It was our fourth mass shooting of the year. And of course, what keeps me up at night is a lone gunman with an AR-15 walking into a public space and murdering countless folks in seconds. But what I'm equally concerned about is the casual gun violence that goes on on our streets. And this mass shooting in Cincinnati is emblematic of that. The two issues that we're focused on, that we're facing is number one, as the mayor said, we are awash in guns. There are guns everywhere in our community. I just did a roundtable with some of our teenagers, and they said they could make a one phone call in their phone and get a gun within an hour. That is happening all across the country. And the second is the inability to resolve differences peacefully. What used to end in a fistfight now ends in a gunfight. And this mass shooting in Cincinnati was a result of two groups of young people getting into an argument and then firing indiscriminately into a crowd with handguns. And what we've seen, unfortunately, at the local level, at least in Ohio, is instead of our state legislatures providing legislation to prevent that or to get to that, they have armed teachers in our schools past stand your ground and now have gotten rid of licensing for concealed carry, which is putting more guns on our streets. So unfortunately, there is a policy disagreement at the levels of government and mayors, as was said in the opening, we don't have the luxury of spinning and obfuscating. We are on the ground trying to deal with this. And oftentimes it feels like we've got two hands tied behind our back. Thank you. Unless the other mayors want to jump in, let's move to another question. We've got limited time. For much of our history, the Midwest has been the industrial heart, as well as the agricultural red basket of the country. We're still dealing with the consequences of changes in the manufacturing sector. And we've got past environmental problems from our role as a manufacturing center. But now we've got issues with climate change that are opening up the possibility that our part of the country might have a rebirth as a climate refuge. We've got more access to fresh water. We've got more moderating temperatures, perhaps. We've got some closer supply lines than states in the south and the southwest and the west. Do you think there's a way to take advantage of this to make the cities in the Midwest more attractive to our young people? And happy to hear from any of you. But Mayor Duggan, Detroit, you're right next to Canada. You've got these challenges. Is there a way that we can market ourselves better and use climate as something in our favor? Yeah, I would never suggest that people in other parts of the country come here because of climate change. But I don't accept the notion that the Midwest is immune. Last year we had 30,000 houses in the city have their basements flooded because we had something that was supposed to be a once-in-500-year rainstorm. It's the second time it's happened in six years. We're spending a lot of time right now rebuilding our stormwater system. We've got a neighborhood called Jefferson Chalmers on the east side of Detroit that's actually below the water level on the Detroit River. And when the Great Lakes levels rise, the entire neighborhood would be underwater were it not for a rose of sandbags. And of course our ski resorts up north have had shortened seasons. So we may not have some of the terrible wildfires or hurricanes other parts of America have experienced. But we are spending every bit as much time trying to make sure that our folks are safe long-term from the effects of climate change. So what can we do to keep young people here? What do we sell for ourselves in the Midwest? We're not having a lot of trouble getting young people to be here. There is more construction going on in Detroit than there's been in 50 years. So in our case I think it's the mobility industry that's attracting them. And of course Mayor's of every major city can tell you the younger generation has moved into the cities. And we're about to get a University of Michigan graduate school built in the city of Detroit that will focus on mobility, finance, and entrepreneurs that Stephen Ross is leading. We're very excited about. So we're feeling pretty good about the young folks moving to the city. Okay, great. For the other mayors, how is climate affecting things in your cities? Is it just a negative? Are there some positives there? Are there other things that we should be looking at when we talk about getting young people to stay in our cities, including of course our great universities in the Big Ten and elsewhere? What, any thoughts? Yeah, this is Mayor Teague and Iowa City. And this is actually a great question when you're talking about climate change and how can we ensure that we have the infrastructure to entice people to come to our city and also remain one of the things that I will say is that climate action is never complete no matter what we do as an ongoing process. We have to be intentional with our and how we focus and dedicate some time to really core services. And the biggest way that we can really impact climate change is ensuring that we educate and equip those that are residents in our community. And so I think that's going to be very important when we're talking about houses and how we can better insulate and make sure that though they are able to financially afford some climate action activities within the homes. The other thing is creating inviting fun and inviting public spaces like parks and trails to make sure that people want to come to our city and just making sure that we have long term goals that really do entice people to come. And because the young people are thinking about this most certainly. So making sure that there's bike trails and any other type of mobility that is easily accessible to people and making sure that it's a part of the city planning efforts to make sure that we have these mobility all of the mobility aspects in place. If I can I'm going to jump in on the point of the question regarding how to keep young people in your city and just for context in the city of Chicago on a yearly basis there are two hundred thousand undergrad and graduate students in our city across all of our different colleges and universities and historically our city government has had little to no contact with these young people. So we started last year really building that relationship and the bottom line for us is making sure that young people particularly those in the technology field understand that they don't have to go to the coast to have a great fulfilling career. Putting our innovative businesses and our economy and strengths of it in front of them and reminding them that and all of us are Midwestern mayors that we are much more affordable than any place that you're ever going to find on the coast. You can own a home. You can have a great fulfilling career and you don't have to go to New York or California to be able to do that. I think there's a lot more that we have to do and I will say also increasingly the value statement is a big point I think for young people and for employers we stand for justice for all period full stop and I believe that increasingly that is going to be a difference maker in how decisions are made by businesses particularly with a young workforce about where they're going to be making specific investments. For example we sent a letter to high school seniors here in our city and encouraging them when they think about their college choices to think about places that share their values. So we are really leaning into the values proposition because we think that it is increasingly becoming a business statement and an advantage for a city like Chicago particularly when we see the number of undergrads and graduate students that pass through our city on a yearly basis. Paul if I could round out the horn here because this is I mean look climate change sustainability is critical in all of our communities but in Cincinnati it is the North Star for our economic development. I'm of the opinion that there will be an inward migration maybe in the next 50 or 100 years but it's going to happen because of climate change and because of the rising cost of living on the on the coast and that's not just rhetoric when you look at the 100 billion dollar investment that Intel just made just two hours north of Cincinnati they chose that location because of number one it's access to freshwater with both the Great Lakes to our north and the Ohio River to our south and because of the climate resiliency of the middle of the country. Look in order to catalyze on that and in order frankly to take advantage of remote work by that I mean if you can live and work anywhere I want you to choose Cincinnati we are on the national scale incredibly affordable we are dense we're diverse we lean into public transportation we're very very walkable as Mayor Lightfoot said we have all of the assets the larger cities do you can achieve whatever you want at a fraction of the cost and on the cutting edge of sustainability so if that's not a pitch for the Midwest I don't know. Great job great job the the Mayor Duggan's comments about the the 500 year rain or flood reminded me my one year I think I was running for reelection and we had a combined sewer overflow issue that flooded up put sewage in a bunch of people's basements and I said you know this is a hundred year or two you know 500 year flood it won't happen again it happened the next weekend and obviously reelection year then the media is all interested I go out you go to these basements with smelly sewage in it and you know but I got people I decided most people don't see our sewers and they don't realize the problems with the infrastructure there they see when the roads are deteriorating the bridges but they don't see the sewers so I got the people behind let's fix the sewers and they actually said they would pick up my house if I didn't push for a sewer rate hike big enough to get this fixed and we're still working on it now but anyways this leads into the my next question and this is infrastructure you know our bridges our roads our sewers our water supply systems airports other physical infrastructure in our older cities our surrounding communities are aging they're sometimes failing but these are usually problems that also transcend many of the governmental boundary lines so we have to deal with they go across state lines across city lines across county lines how can we best address these infrastructure needs and the regional structural challenges that face our cities today and uh mera piervo you're right there with uh kentucky uh ohio indiana all coming together how do you deal with these issues and any thoughts on how we can best deal with these going forward paul let me let me first say I did go to a house state i'm not going to make any dumb jokes about ohio state michigan I am going to say though mayor taylor they must pay you a lot more than they pay the mayor since daddy because you are either up to your eyeballs in debt with four degrees or you you've got uh you've hit the jackpot there but but anyway that's absolutely right paul these these challenges that many of our city space really transcend specific jurisdiction and isolated interests uh almost by definition and you can look no further evidence of that than a very local project here in since daddy and that is the brent spence bridge which in many ways has been a poster child for the importance of the federal infrastructure funding that we've seen you know a failing bridge doesn't know where the city limits are or for that matter where the state limits are and it doesn't know the political party or or uh or the the the party of its local elected officials it's it's simply failing right and residents on both sides of the river have felt the effects of closures of congestion and and a national negative impact frankly on supply chain issues due to this bridge acting as a bottleneck between two states ohio and kentucky and the intersection of two interstates i75 and i71 and and the reason we're on tracks to fix this is because the state governments of both ohio and kentucky governed by two leaders of different political parties and regional leaders impacted by the bridge we all came together to get this done i was there with governors andy basher and and mike de wine in may as they signed a joint application between the two states for $2 billion in federal infrastructure support but but when we're when we're a city like ours facing limited resources and a problem of this scale that's really the only way we can get transformational projects off the ground because in order to get that federal funding we have to be able to prove that we have the partnerships the plan and the local match funding to accomplish the project and that's and that's true for big projects like the brentzbenz bridge but it's also true for smaller projects like the western hills viaduct the west side of our city has historically been connected to downtown through one primary artery and that is the viaduct a nearly 100 year old bridge that is structurally and functionally obsolete it's it's literally rain and concrete traffic has had to be reduced maintenance has become increased increasingly expensive and and fixing it is critical for those residents who depend on the viaduct to access the places where they work or where they live and and play so we were we were thrilled to just be approved just last week for a grant of 127 million dollars in an infrastructure dollars for that project but but securing that required us to come together with the county and the city and county don't always get along and demonstrate our ability to commit the necessary local match dollars we came together to get a game changing transit levy passed in 2020 which provided a joint regional transit board which we refer to as sorda and thanks to that effort in our partnerships we were able to get over 150 million and local match dollars to pair with federal funding so in order to be as competitive as possible for this once in a generation amount of dollars our strategy has been collaboration not just at the city and the county but also across state lines and so far it's been really successful great um i'm going to brag a little bit about a former indiana mayor uh pete buda judge is the uh the secretary uh cabinet secretary that's been dealing with the infrastructure issues uh former mayor of south bend indiana and working with moon uh or with uh mitch landrew former mayor of new orleans too on these infrastructure issues so it's uh mayors do know that these these are direct issues how about the rest of you how are you dealing with infrastructure challenges particularly the regional issues that go into this well we're very happy that the former indiana resident pete buda judge is one of the newest residents of the state of michigan uh and uh we have a really interesting situation a lot of cities faced but uh for a half a century the heart of the black community in the city of detroit was paradise valley hastings straight uh and in the 1950s in a decision that without any doubt was driven by racial considerations that entire district was wiped out and a freeway stretch called i-375 was put in uh the people the thousands of people were displaced in the late 50s uh there is really no doubt led to the violence in 1967 in detroit's still feeling the repercussions today but i'm pretty confident uh with the sec help of the secretary of transportation and our governor gretchen whitmer uh we are going to do something to to re-nit this city there is a huge ditch in the city of detroit that divides it where i-375 is and we are really focused now on pulling that freeway out raising it back up to a surface street which will create a mile of high value development uh in the heart of downtown detroit will be one of the most attractive development strips anywhere in america any mayor would love to have that right through the heart of their their downtown and the governor and i are committed to make sure that the people who have a chance to invest and rebuild that are done in a way that's reflective of those folks who were historically deprived of those economic opportunities we are going to rebuild uh a Hastings street in a way uh that's going to to provide opportunity for those who have been excluded and that kind of infrastructure project is is really exciting and uh i think we'll have some news on that very shortly sounds great you're lightfoot i'm happy to i'm happy to jump in um i really think that uh mayor our provol really um said exactly the right things um from the beginning of my administration we have really focused on regionalism um and particularly around infrastructure transportation water which is a big uh issue for us in this region um you build those relationships um when you don't need them so that when you do need them you can draw up on them we're facing uh this is an infrastructure issue but we're facing um challenges right now because uh um a certain governor from texas has decided to um put uh migrants on buses and ship them to cities like um chicago new york uh in washington dc i could say a whole lot about that but i won't in this context but we have to have regional partnership to be able to address these issues yes we're in a very large city but we've got challenges of our own with affordable housing shortages um making sure that our homeless population um has housing and then we have them now in the last uh two plus weeks 400 new residents that are coming to chicago that we hadn't anticipated and then have a whole plethora of needs so making sure that we are working together as chicago land and not just chicago uh is critically important but i think um to mary dungan's point um you've got to face the challenges and longstanding failures to address infrastructure needs crumbling bridges coming worlds i mean that is the most visible signs for our residents of whether or not a governance function well or not so before the federal infrastructure bill uh was a glimmer and uh president biden's eye we floated um our own billion dollar um bond to fund a multi-year capital plan which in the city we were always obviously always doing infrastructure work but it wasn't sustainable and many of the projects because of the lack of investment are multi-year um things that need to get done whether it's replacing our water and sewer lines whether it's tackling um once and for all our challenges around around lead service lines we have more lead service lines uh in our residents than any other city in a country because lead service lines were mandatory up until 1986 so a lot of these long delayed infrastructure needs we haven't sat back and waited um we have taken our own destiny in our own hands um and are working on these issues again hand in glove with the residents of our city other stakeholders but our regional partners as well great let's move on to our our next major question and this will be for maritime the primarily for maritime to start with um public hostility toward um local and state governmental organizations questions about the legitimacy of our elections concerns and challenges with the rule of law these all directly impact the functioning democracies in our communities today the university of michigan's center for local state and urban policy one of our sponsors uh one of our hosts today just released findings from a survey of michigan's local government leaders that found over half 53 percent said their own government personnel had faced harassment or abuse from members of the public in the last few years we've probably all seen the videos read stories about residents being openly hostile out to our local officials at city council meetings school board meetings public health commission meetings and so on um curious uh particularly with iowa being uh sort of in the front lines with our presidential caucuses in the front lines uh sometimes with new ways of doing things i'm wondering uh mayor teague is this a problem in your jurisdiction are you concerned about disinformation election deniers threats to election workers and the like and is there anything that can be done to help uh correct this situation across the country mayor teague yes well we've certainly seen a change in behaviors in recent years uh for a long time we saw some of this play out at a federal level then a trickle down to some of the the state government and now we're seeing it in uh city council as well as our county and school boards on a routine basis personal attacks profane language um and harassing or threatening behaviors are becoming more common um i think we all witness you know the united states capital uh what happened there uh one of the biggest concerns that i do have is what will this mean for a future pool of elected officials many people that i talked to they actually want no parts of um of an elected role because of what they've observed um as a lack of this uh civil discord and personal attacks that elected officials have faced and so i do believe that we need to try to reverse this trend um because we really do need people to raise their hand up and say hey i want to be a part um of uh uh you know speaking on behalf of of constituents in this community and represent and we have a lot of great candidates that just won't raise their hand right now when we're talking about solutions i think there are a few solutions first we have to ensure that elected officials model the behavior that um we want people to see as we've seen onto again so many levels of um not proper modeling of how do you engage with elected officials uh saying what you want without actually um just having these bad interactions where you're screaming and hollering and talking about uh the person given defining the individual i am a i am someone that really do believe that people should come and voice their concerns they're passionate about some of these topics you they'll get emotional they'll get angry i think that is all appropriate but when you start to really you know lash out and define people i think that's where a person needs to step back and just reconsider how how can they get their message across government is always the strongest when it's um closest to the people unfortunately our lives are increasingly online anymore which provides a different kind of distance at our local level we were online for a long time during the thick of the pandemic and now we're back in person and i think many of the communities are now experiencing you know returning back in person to have their meetings um the other thing that i will say is that uh we have to recognize how people consume information it's drastically changed in the last decade we have to reshape how our communications um is being shared and we have to do something to ensure that it's timely accurate and fact-based we rely a lot on our um on organizations in our community and and oftentimes organizations they have their own um i would say uh interest that is happening within city government and i honestly just think that um they have a great opportunity to impact those that have an issue to be brought forth before council but i really do have to always encourage them to make sure that it's accurate and fact-based sometimes they have this flashing name that you know store up people and get them to come to city hall and they don't have all the information and so i always encourage people to make sure that they're doing fact-based information to those that they're really representing when they are an organization other than that i know that across the nation again we're we're seeing just this civil discourse and i i really do believe that it's those personal relationships taking time to talk to people and making sure that you hear them out as an elected official but also making sure that the information that we're sharing is given a full uh scope so that people can have a greater understanding of the topic at hand great i i know i want to make sure we have time for the student questions but just uh other mirrors uh i think it's it's such an important issue the future sort of democracy and the elections in our country i mean is this been an issue in your cities at all or is this uh playing out more at a statewide or national level well as far as personally certainly i've had no issues i i've broke tradition i drive myself as i have for the last nine years i pump my own gas i go to the grocery store by myself in detroit and certainly people want to talk to me about the dead tree or the pothole after they get their picture taken but that's that's as bad as a harassment's gotten but on the voting side detroit was at ground zero uh election night in in 2020 when donald trump uh sent people from outside the city down uh to the counting center and uh in in 2016 trump won michigan by 10 000 votes in 2020 he lost it by 150 000 votes uh so president biden did 160 000 votes better 2 000 votes better out of detroit 158 000 votes better out of the surrounding suburbs the gross points the oakland counties where the suburban women shifted but donald trump didn't stand up on election night and said charge the clerk's offices in gross point where the votes are going against me it was a very cynical attempt uh to stoke racial prejudice saying you can't trust the vote count in detroit and we were very proud here after three independent audits and four lawsuits uh that the city of detroit ballot counting uh was found to be uh very close to perfect uh and thrown out so i think there's a lot of pride here but when you want to talk statewide we have a republican candidate for attorney general who was the leader of the election deniers and a republican candidate for secretary of state who was basically the number two election denier but i'm pretty confident the people of the state of michigan will uh let them know in november uh what they think about the behavior of the election deniers well i will say that i i am very worried about the state of our democracy and i frankly think the winds of of toxicity were blowing long before donald trump came down the escalator in 2015 but certainly he's accelerated it and there's a lot i think that all of us could say about this question but i'll i'll focus on two elements that i think are really um at most propagating the toxicity that we're seeing in the dialogue uh people who make money propagating lies um and hate it doesn't make any sense to me i've been watching with great interest um the sandy hook parents who have taken um the info wars guide to court um and this guy continues to make money he gets up in court he says one thing and then he goes on a show um that evening and propagates more lies and he's got sponsors he's got folks that are paying money to be a part of his whole operation which is spreading lies and hate so we've got to go after the economic incentive for people to um spread lies and hate that i think are disintegrating pillars of our democracy the other piece of that and it's really the i think the other side of the same coin is the social media platforms um we've got to hold them accountable there's got to be federal regulation not only um do they know that hate and lies are being propagated on their platforms also violence is being propagated on their platforms the fact that we can at any given time go on a social media platform and buy a bunch of illegal firearms the fact that gang members are openly talking on social media platform about the violence of their planning against particular targeted individuals and we hear oh well you know free speech our algorithms it's nonsense so to me there's a lot that needs to be done we've got to teach our kids about um de-escalation we've got to teach our kids that demonizing somebody who has a disagreement um with you on a policy issue um we can't tolerate or stand that if we're going to have a healthy democracy but we've also got to go after the people who are allowing this hate and lies to be spread like wildfire and it's the the bloggers um it is uh people on the podcast and absolutely the social media comments yeah well said let's um i wanted to make sure we have time for our student questions and we've saved about 15 minutes here for that we're going to have to start out with a video question um uh from um our host at the university of michigan i think that should be coming up first and we'll have lightning round responses we'll just call on all the mayors to make a quick response to the questions that come from the students my name is daniel walleck i'm a third year dual master of public policy and master of urban and regional planning student from the university of michigan this question is for all of you despite need being at an all-time high federal funding to support affordable housing has significantly declined from what it used to be within the context of a particularly volatile national political climate how have your cities changed or how are you changing your approach to funding and creating more affordable housing in your cities thank you daniel housing issues i'll jump in very quickly so um we are taking a comprehensive approach to housing uh we've put 57 million dollars into our trust fund to provide gap financing to get more affordable units onto the market more quickly with a dedicated stream of revenue of five million dollars every year we've taken a we've reviewed all of our tax abatements for real estate development deals to make sure that they are equitable we'll be rolling out those conclusions later this year and finally probably most importantly and hardest of all we're doing a fundamental review of our land use policies specifically zoning 70 percent of Cincinnati prohibits multifamily units by design our poverty is concentrated and our city is segregated we're forming that and doing away with parking minimums and multifamily unit prohibitions will allow us to not just grow but also be more integrated and equitable how was that for lightning was that good real good other mayors i'll jump in we um announced last december a billion dollar plan to build more affordable units when i came into office we were about 120 000 affordable units down and we've been steadily chipping away at it but what i'm most proud about the billion dollar investment is not just the size of it which is obviously important but for chicago probably still one of the most segregated cities in a country we're going to be building affordable units all over our city and not just in poor black and brown neighborhoods so it's a big deal for us a big step towards ending segregation once and for all our city and uh as all the mayors know uh relations between mayors and city councils can often be strained uh the one area where the city council and i have worked together completely has been this we've made a decision you're going to get any help at all in building housing in this city 20 percent of your units are going to have to be set aside for affordable housing we've done that the last eight years and we've just taken the position that every section of this city is going to be available to people of all incomes that's what we think a city is we preserve 10 000 units that had their federal tax credits expiring we built another 2000 and last month the city council support moved another 200 million dollars into it and so far we've avoided the kinds of of experiences a lot of communities have had with 10 cities and the like but it is a commitment that every part of this city is going to have affordable housing and it's something when you're unified it's actually pretty easy to get the developers to go along with it fair take yes in our city our council is going through a strategic planning process right now what we've done in the past is in our river front crosses area we required all new projects to have 10 percent affordable housing in it now one of the things about that is that they can do a fee in lieu of and and now that we're going through this new process where we're I would agree zoning is a is a major part of it that we have to look at we're looking at form-based goals throughout our community and as we continue to do that we'll ensure that we in you know have some affordable housing it is right now the number one thing that this council wants to do is affordable housing and so as we go through our finalization of our strategic planning process I do anticipate that we're going to certainly increase our partnerships with our affordable housing partners and with community members here alike great the next question is a written question that was submitted from a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I think Mayor Lightfoot tied into some of this earlier answer but I'd like all of you just for a quick response basically how can mayor's elected officials and public servants alike create a criminal justice criminal justice system that is equitable while public opinion is so negative I'll jump in so that's a very big question and in a lightning rail that's difficult so I'll just I'll just double click on on one issue and that is our justice system at least in Ohio and in many local communities is a black box we we don't understand frankly because we don't have the data who is getting sentenced for what and why and so one of the things that I've been really working on in my career I was first of all the clerk of courts running the courthouse and now as mayor is partnering with our local judges our prosecutor's office and our law enforcement to have one data portal so that we can have a better sense from arrest all the way through appeals what is actually going on in our justice system so then we can fashion reforms that are surgical rather than kind of reaching around in the dark anybody else want to jump in yeah I mean look a really tough question and what I would say is you've got to make sure as I said before that all parts of the criminal justice ecosystem are aligned on some core principles and for me it's about holding violent dangerous people accountable not turning jails into debtors prisons where poor people can't get out because they can't afford a $1,000 or less bail in some instances but also making sure that we never never forget victims and witnesses that are out there obviously criminal justice reform really focuses in most instances around the defendants and of course they deserve their day in court they need to make sure that the constitutional protections are that they are entitled to become real and meaningful but if we forget the victims and the witnesses we forget the hardship that they face particularly when they've been the victims of a violent crime we are going to lose the public and that unfortunately is what I fear is happening too much across the country that we forgotten the people who need us to stand up in this moment and protect them and keep them safe so I'll probably go a different angle right there I would just say mental health is really important when we're looking at this because that's something that we're hearing all the time right mental health and I think we're going at this with a punitive lens often and I think we just have to also engage with our professionals that really do understand rehabilitation when people are in the system and so I won't I would actually echo everything that has been said before and I just want to bring in the element of mental health. So Mayor Lightfoot and I are a complete agreement which isn't a total surprise a few decades ago I was a student at the University of Michigan who lived on the seventh floor of South Quad and right down the hallway from me was a young woman named Lori Lightfoot both of us went on to be prosecutors before we became mayor and there is no question the people in our communities are entitled to public safety we can't apologize for that we need to do it well but there are times officers are going to make mistakes making split second decisions and there's times when the mistakes are more deep seated and we respond to it in three ways transparency transparency transparency we became the first city in the country to have every officer fully outfitted with old bodycams and dashcams that were integrated and we come out quickly after every case and there's been times our officers have done things wrong and there's been immediate consequences there have been a lot of times where our officers were exonerated but the public in this town knows right or wrong we're going to show what happened we're going to own up to it we're going to deal with it forthrightly. The um actually there was another question that you kind of touched on already about reallocating funds for community programs from the police department and I think you've all touched on that a little bit let me move to another question this is from uh can I just jump in on that for a second yeah you know in the wake of the murder of george floyd there was a huge I think national alcray around defunding I'm not one who supports defunding in part because of this most police departments 95 percent of their budget is personnel because of the vagaries of union contracts when you talk about defunding you're talking about getting rid of the most junior officers who are the best trained and the most diverse and come to the job with a different set of sensibilities um than more veteran officers that are routinely on the job 20 25 30 years and so I think it's both and we've got to support our police departments and when I hear people talk about defunding what I hear is we want other forms of policing and response on an investment in communities which I agree with but the path through to get there in my view is not to defund our police departments okay let's go um we're about out of time so I think we've got time for one more question this is from a student uh University of Iowa why has trust in the government plummeted and what impact has this had on politics in recent years when I was an undergrad in George McGovern was running for president after Nixon we all said what happened to trust in the government so it's been a long-standing uh issue but I think some of the stuff we've seen and and certainly the impact of social media to spread things that aren't true makes it that much more challenging for for all of us and I don't know what we can do except stand up and tell the truth and I do think over time that'll work yeah mayor kink mentioned you know earlier that he was worried about uh good people not jumping into public service and and that is that is the lifeblood of democracy and there's no doubt that social media and uh and the perpetration of of lies as mayor light lightfoot raised up in one of her earlier points has contributed to that but I want to add to the conversation two factors that I think are utterly polluting our politics and that is the surgical gerrymandering that we've experienced here in Ohio and other states have experienced and you know of course democrats do this too but overwhelmingly it's republican states that have gerrymandered their legislatures which have resulted in some completely out of the mainstream pieces of legislation and number two uh money money just flowing in all directions into these races oftentimes from not the city or district or state swaying swaying public opinion and until we get meaningful reforms on both of those fronts our democracy will continue to stumble along I would say ditto and totally endorse your hundred percent right mayor rubella so national um national government does matter to people but I think local is is where people can reach out and touch individuals and and I think that is something that um when when people in the community are uh wanting something and the government don't provide it for them so every day people ride on streets every day um you know there's potholes uh and then neighbors who who have some complaints whether that is one against a neighbor where there's a noise ordinance that's not being followed or something like that um or even their own lawn so I think um a lot of this is personal for individuals when when we're talking about this distrust and I think well as a government we have to do a better job of actually explaining uh policies and and coals and also just being quiet sometime and hearing people out oftentimes we think we need to have an answer but what we really need to do is just listen well it's uh I used to tell people all the time that I when I thought about government and talked about government I really didn't buy into the sort of Ronald Reagan government is the problem approach but I didn't buy I didn't always buy into the Lyndon Johnson government is the answer approach I've always said government is us it's what we make of it and I think the lesson from these mayors from this discussion is that all of us need to get more involved we need more people getting involved more people voting more people showing up and more people learning about what's really happening and I think if we do that I think then our democracy can be in good shape and if we don't do that then then we do have concerns going forward I want to thank all the mayors uh for being part of the program today and I want to thank all the folks that put this together uh and for the audience that turned into us so thank y'all really