 All right. Welcome to our webinar on the federal advocacy agenda. My name is Priya Chayan. I'm the Associate Director of Content here at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And I wanted to welcome you to today's session. Today's webinar is actually one in a series of webinars we're hosting prior to Passport Online 2020, which is right around the corner actually. Earlier sessions included training on grassroots advocacy, preservation law and easements, and understanding climate change. And once I hand things over to our first speaker, I will drop in links for you to access the recordings for those. But before we begin, there are a few technical logistics. First of all, if you're attending this webinar, you are required to follow the Passport Code of Conduct and I'll drop that link in a moment in the chat as well. We will take questions from the audience during the webinar. There are actually going to be two places where we will stop and take questions. And we will indicate when that is, but you should feel free to submit questions at any time using the Q&A panel at the bottom of your Zoom sort of webinar screen. If you put the question in the chat, I will direct you to place it in the Q&A box because it's easier for us to track during the session. However, you can feel free to use the chat to talk to each other during the sessions as well. We have enabled closed captioning for this webinar and you can find that information at the bottom of your screen too to enable it. And then following the program, we'll send out a recording of today's session in a follow-up in email along with any additional links and information that we have shared out during this session. And all of these webinars and anything else, all of the other pre-Passport webinars are hosted in the Preservation Leadership Forum webinar library, which I will also include in the follow-up email. And now I'm going to hand things over to Shaw, who is the Vice President for Government Relations for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Shaw, take it away. Well, thank you, Priya. Thanks for getting us started and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining today's webinar. We're glad to have you with us. So this webinar is designed to inform our conference attendees and particularly those who intend to participate in our federal advocacy program about the key historic preservation policy priorities and where those priorities currently stand in Congress. So if you have not yet signed up for the Pass Forward Conference, I encourage you to do so and encourage your colleagues to do so. And if you are attending but have not yet signed up for federal advocacy, please consider joining your state captains who are organizing these meetings. I think with this webinar, you'll have all you need to engage and jump right in. So I also wanted to point out that the webinar is not limited to passport attendees and is open to anyone interested in preservation advocacy at the federal level. The webinar is being recorded as Priya noted. So if you have colleagues that you know we're unable to attend today's session, please do encourage them to review the webinar, which which as Priya said will be located on preservation forum website. So one thing I did want to also mention will be describing some of the one pagers that have been developed for preservation advocacy will have one pagers on the historic tax credit historic preservation fund and the public lands work. So we encourage you to familiarize yourselves with those and to use them going forward. So we describe where we're going to go with this webinar, we have a great lineup of panelists with us today who will describe some of the work that is being done in support of historic preservation on Capitol Hill. So first with Russ Carnahan, President of Preservation Action and former member of Congress representing Missouri's third congressional district from 2005 to 2013, who's going to walk us through a number of key strategies for engaging with members, a member to Congress and their staff. Next we'll hear from Patrick Robertson. We're happy to have him with us he's with Confluence government relations, who also leads the historic tax credit coalitions government relations work. And he's going to speak about the critical advocacy opportunity that we have before us as it relates to the federal historic tax credit. Hello Patrick, with the description of some of the exciting new developments that we're seeing around the fiscal year 22 appropriations, and the remarkable support that we're seeing for historic preservation as part of that. At that point we're going to pause for any questions from the audience before hearing from our next panel of experts and give folks a chance to weigh in and for the for the panelists to answer questions. I'm going to pause for, sorry, after our interim Q&A, we're going to hear from Kelly Hummerkrauser, director of relations for Main Street America. We'll talk about some of the priorities for Main Street, and some of the priorities for them with some of the agencies that we don't typically work with in historic preservation so that I think we'll be eliminating. And after that we're going to turn things over to my colleague Pam Bowman, who will be presenting and introducing guest stars Dan Sakura, president of Sakura Consulting and longtime conservation and preservation advocate, and to Leah Jones, legislative staff and Senator Chris Coons office of Delaware, who's going to talk about, they are going to talk about efforts to advance the Amache National Historic Site Act, and the Brown v Board Education National Historic Site Expansion Act, respectively. We're very thrilled that both of you could be with us today and we're looking forward to hearing from you. And then finally, we're going to wrap up with a final Q&A session where we'll answer questions, pose questions to the panelists for the entire presentation and we'll try to try to get through those as well. So without further ado, I will turn it over to Russ. Thank you very much. It's great to be with you and great to be with those of you joining this advocacy program in the run up to the past four. I am president preservation action since 2015. And we have long history of collaborating closely with the National Trust on issues in Washington. In fact, in our laws of the organization, the president of the board of the National Trust recommends representative to serve on our board and they describe exact representative. So we've been especially thankful to work with Shaw and CS leadership and recent promotion in fact at the National Trust is VP of government relations. I want to go on to the next slide. And I want to talk a little bit about a quick overview of preservation action. We were founded in 1974. We are the National Grassroots Organization dedicated entirely allowing for federal legislation to further historic preservation efforts. And we want to continue to make historic preservation a national priority and utilizing citizen grassroots advocates as some of the best advocates that there can be in Washington. And so we have, we coordinate with the shippers and typos and other national groups on the annual advocacy historic preservation advocacy week, each March in Washington. We do legislative briefings on the hill. We normally do an event in the fall in conjunction with pass forward and do a number of education training and advocacy events throughout the year. And let's go on to the next slide. I want to talk about really communicating with your elected officials. There seems to be a lot of mystery about that. Having been on the receiving end of advocacy as elected official in our state legislature and in the US Congress. Let me take a little bit of mystery out of that. First of all, legislators really value relationships from their local communities and knowing about local projects and events, and also being well informed on issues and learning how they connect and make a difference locally. They really value that kind of information and they value those kind of relationships to put it to work in national legislation that has local impact. So it's gotten easier with technology to identify and stay in touch with your elected officials. You know, you can Google your state's congressional delegation and find out who your two US senators are and your house delegation and your particular house member. You can look at the relevant committees to identify if they're on a key committee that authorizes programs around historic preservation or thrown an appropriations committee. You can also check to see if they've sponsored key legislation in the past about historic. So, really four different areas I would encourage you I'll call these the four hours about relationships repetition, reliable information and real constituents. First relationships. You don't want to be introducing yourself in an ideal situation to your elected official or staff when you have an urgent crisis or problem. The best way to do that is to have an ongoing relationship. So, you can imagine the difference in a reception at a congressional office if you or your delegation or part of the group is, you know, they're on an annual basis or they connected with local events in your community. And they can, they can make that connection and understand who you are what you're about versus showing up for the first time when you've got an urgent issue. So, those relationships are part of a continuum. And with your representative, looking for opportunities to connect their work in Washington, but also looking to connect with them and their staff on local events. Any opportunities to do that and members and staff are always looking on can tell you to look for places to go special events in their local communities that help highlight the work they're doing in Washington. So take advantage and get to know the local staff in your community, and be sure you offer those kinds of invitations. Again, this is not a one time thing. Think of things you can do three out throughout the years not difficult to connect with your member office through advocacy efforts through letters that are done online or it could automatically be directed to your member. So take advantage of those opportunities of repeat appearances in front of the office, build that relationship. And then, next, liable information. Members get bombarded with literally thousands of bits of information on issues across the board, but become a reliable resource for your member Congress and let's say the bodies always make better decisions. When they have reliable information that in time to digest that and incorporate that into legislation, and they get better results. Oftentimes when Congress makes bad decisions. They've rushed. They haven't consulted with key experts. And then they often have to go back and clean up something quite right. So be that reliable resource of information. And then finally, connect with real constituents members of Congress are elected. I know I'm saying the obvious here, but they care about their constituents and their voters. And when you're connecting them with real live constituents who can vote for them that can talk about real projects in their district, you know real special events around historic preservation that you can invite them to, they can participate in and be a featured speaker for those events. Those are great ways to build that relationship, but also for them to understand the impact of legislation and programs that they deal with year after year. And we've seen with historic preservation and number of successes and number of challenges where you're either on an offensive or defensive positions. One of the most infamous was of course the a few years ago efforts to completely eliminate the federal historic tax credit. And I know we're going to hear more about that later on in the program. That really was a defining moment I think among the preservation moment movement to see how people came together multiple organizations national state and local came together to advocate to make the local case for the federal credit. And I think the success of turning that around saving the federal historic tax credit was really show the history preservation movement and advocates what we can do when we work together. So we've taken that same kind of spirit and energy and success to go forward. And we've seen appropriations you're going to hear that more about that have been at record levels recently. And gone and gradually each cycle. And that's a, that's part of, you know, the impact of really successful advocacy efforts and preservation action work that that is being done through the National Trust has been a key part of that. So, I believe that is, I don't think there's another slide. I think that this is a one more slide so this is a shot honoring Congressman Darren LaHood with Frank Butterfield from Illinois. We have a number of key champions in the Congress that have stepped up on historic preservation issues. Be sure to watch for the opportunity to join a hybrid version of historic preservation advocacy week coming up in March of 2022. And we hope you all will really participate in the past forward advocacy events coming up and just use that as a starting point to continue that kind of repetition and relationship building. That is so critical to advancing a historic preservation issue. So look forward to your questions. And I know you're going to benefit from hearing the rest of the panel to really show this is really accessible, doable is not difficult. It doesn't take a lot of your time. It really makes a big difference for historic preservation advocacy and continuing those programs nationally. Thanks so much. I think that brings me up. My name is Patrick Robertson. And as Sean noted, I'm a principal at Confluence government relations. Also the lobbyist for the federal historic tax credit coalition. If we can go ahead to the next slide, I'm going to take a few minutes to sort of drill down on the things that Mr Carnegie and talked about and get specific about issues on advocacy. The historic tax credit coalition is a group of folks who care about the historic tax credit or from around the country who use it, or want want to use it. And we are sort of the largest DC based advocacy organization as Mr Carnegie noted preservation action has the grassroots side of things locked up and they do a great job at that. We do a little bit of a little more traditional sort of DC lobbying. The coalition retains three lobbying firms including mine to go out and spread the word about the federal historic tax credit. You know, one of the things the points that Mr Carnegie and made is that sustained advocacy is so important and it is. Another thing I'll note to you is, as much as you all might read otherwise in the newspaper or see otherwise on TV, members of Congress and their staffs really don't want to hear from lobbyists all that often. I'm able to go in and sort of make the technical case and answer questions and, and lay the groundwork but what really always drives home our advocacy efforts is when folks from members home districts or senators home states are able to talk about ongoing things in the community and relate them. In our case to the federal historic tax credit. So, that's a really important part of everyone's work and something we all need to do and is much appreciated and quite effective. I, as I noted I'm here to talk about the federal historic tax credit which is the federal government single largest investment in preservation. As you all may or may not be aware the federal historic tax credit ends up costing the federal government about a billion dollars a year in foregone tax revenue or in tax credits. It's a billion dollar investment in, in rehabilitation across the country, and more than that, it's a 20% credit right. So that means that it's an additional $5 billion every year in private capital that goes into rehabilitation project so billion from the federal government $5 billion from the private sector $6 billion a year into preservation because of the credit now. And we talk a lot about what would preservation look like without this and, and would people really do the same things. Certainly there are buildings that we would be preserved to the same level. As they are now using the federal historic tax credit but there are a lot that that would, and I'm going to talk a little bit about the historic tax credit growth and opportunity act and the budget reconciliation process, which are two really long boring Washington types that are kind of terms, but here's what it boils down to those things that, which include improvements to the federal historic tax credit are the most significant improvements to that HTC since it was put into the law permanently in 1986 and tax reform. Since then, it's had a few pieces chipped away it's had a couple of additions, but certainly nothing like what we're looking for now. I will describe the process and then I'll describe the bill, I think, process wise the House Ways and Means Committee has passed a bill that includes all the enhancements for the federal HTC that the coalition and the trust and preservation action and others have endorsed going forward plus a couple that were at least one that was new which is great. And in addition, we are now waiting on this final reconciliation package to pass the House and ultimately the Senate, and that's what you read about about all the man cinema negotiations and Joe Manchin and Kirsten cinema, trying to change the Biden proposal and they need 50 votes in the Senate and all these things so what your members need to hear now if you're supportive of the federal historic tax credit is you want to see those HTC improvements included in the final bill and that's we're asking people to say our message is pretty simple. We can go ahead on to the next slide. The federal historic tax credit coalition put out a video last week or a week and a half ago or so, with a few, a little bit of an illustration of what it looks like for a building that is rehabilitated. And, and one of the taglines in our social media was more credit, more value, more buildings, more uses more simplest. Right, and that's, that's what the historic test credit growth and opportunity act does. There's five provisions plus sort of a sixth one. There's an increase to 30% in the credit for all deals for five years to help economic recovery from the pandemic which has been devastating to historic preservation and HTC projects. There's a bump in the credit to 30% permanently for all small deals of deals under two and a half $3 million in credits. And there is a change in the adjusted basis rules so you only have to spend 50% of your adjusted basis on substantial rehab so your building doesn't have to get to totally run down to be able to use the credit but it can be in in sort of moderate shape and you can use the credit. It allows nonprofits to use the credit a lot more easily. It allows them to stop jumping through some of the hoops that they need to jump through to use the credit for buildings they own. And finally it eliminates the basis adjustment, which means we won't tax the federal historic tax credit right at this position the building, but it also means that it's easier to pair with lie tech and opportunity zones and other things because those don't have this. So I know Priya and Patrick Rossi are going back and forth in the chat about the one pagers but those are up and the one pager on the HTC go bill will give you a little better sense of what's in there and what's going on for you to go to. But what I want to talk about today is really how you can take what Mr. Carnahan told you about advocacy and what you think of the historic tax credit and put those together. Right now the most important group of people are the 50 Democratic senators in the United States Senate, who are negotiating the final contours of this build back better reconciliation. They started at three and a half trillion dollars, right, they're looking to potentially cut down to one and a half trillion dollars of spending. Senator mansion who's a Democrat from West Virginia has said that he's comfortable at that one and a half trillion dollar number, Senator cinema is a little less clear on where she's comfortable but she's questioned some of the tax increases. And so we're in this spot where some of these changes to programs that we care about like the HTC may not end up in that final package. And the only way we're going to push back on potentially limiting the HTC provisions is by letting our members of Congress and especially our Democratic senators know where we stand and it's something that we want them to be. And as Mr. Carnahan said these people stand for reelection, they have to come to you to keep their jobs every two or six years depending on if they're in the House or the Senate, and they care about what you think. And as I've said I can talk to on blue in the face right, but, but when it's what when what I'm saying is backed up by local on the ground knowledge and projects that they know and buildings that they've heard of and potential new projects that they drive by I don't know why that building still empty that sort of translation makes all the difference in the work. I did leave out one provision it's in that reconciliation bill. And that's Dwight Evans who's from a member of Congress from Philadelphia on the Ways and Means Committee also included a provision that will allow the HTC to be used on public schools. And so that's another expansion that fits into these five mores right again more credits more value more buildings more uses more simplicity. It's just an extra provision in there so how do you advocate, what do you do, right, how do you get to people and what I always say is, you want to do just three things, right. You want to reach out to the office either by phone or by email or by running into your member of Congress at home or calling or whatever. Let them know who you are. Let them know what you care about and why, and then let them know what you want them to do. Right. So in my case, I would call Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton because I'm from Washington DC and I'd say Congresswoman Norton. I live down the street from you on Capitol Hill. And I really care about the federal historic text credit. It's done enormous good on Capitol Hill it's rehabilitated the old Naval hospital which is now the Hill Center. It's rehabilitated Union Station. We've seen it used on Barrick's row and elsewhere, but we have a ton of building stock left to do, and those deals are getting harder and harder. The credit has been seen its value reduced over the last few years, especially when it was moved to five years in tax reform instead of a one year credit. We need the changes in in the infrastructure bill in reconciliation bill to make sure that the rest of our community can take advantage of DC is one of the places that gets really good use out of the federal historic tax credit. We need to keep that going. Please support the HTC provisions in in the reconciliation bill. And that's it. It's as simple as that 30 seconds. If you have an email, if you have a project that's waiting for these provisions, even better. If you have friends or developers lawyers accountants investors whoever it is you can also send the same email and introduce yourselves in the email and sort of copy everybody. We're looking for past forward and are willing to bring this up as part of your advocacy day I think that would be great. And, and that's really, that's really all we need in terms of advocacy for the HTC we need sustained advocacy. I'm going to put the historic tax credits Twitter handle in the chat right now. So if anybody wants to go grab that video I referenced it's in our Twitter feed a number of times that will continue to be reposted over the next week or so. You're welcome to use that and tag your members and talk about preservation and the HTC so I think I've hit exactly the amount of time I was supposed to talk as my clock gets 330. I think I get the pleasure of turning this back over to my friend Shaw Sprague, who you've all heard from already, but who's going to talk through the HPF now and we'll come back and take questions I'll just note the slide that's up there now. Are those six pieces of the legislation that I referenced, and you'll have this slideshow for reference in the future or the one pager that's on the trust website so shot with that I'll hand it to you. Fantastic thank you Patrick appreciate that that great overview and what the ask is now on HTC. And I also wanted to thank everyone who has already reached out to their member of Congress in support of the historic tax credit, particularly those senate Democrats who will control that reconciliation process. We are close closer than we've been in in a generation and more, but certainly as Patrick noted by no means a guarantee so please keep up your advocacy over the next several weeks. As we see this infrastructure legislation continued to develop on Capitol Hill, and help us secure this this critical victory for the preservation movement. Next slide please. So here I wanted to take a moment to describe some of the really truly exciting support that we've seen for the historic preservation fund over the last year. As most of you likely know the historic preservation fund supports the work of state and tribal historic preservation offices, and may perform a number of critical functions, including section 106 review national register nominations and tying into Patrick's presentation historic tax credit review among other, among other functions. This is going to be particularly critical as we see the infrastructure package move through and the significant amount of infrastructure funding and projects that we're likely to see so that's going to be a huge uptick in work for shippos and tipos and they're going to need that that funding support to continue to do their work. The key piece of the HPF is that it supports a number of grant programs listed on the chart to your right that support the preservation of important civil rights sites, historically black colleges and universities survey grants for underrepresented communities, smaller town community grants in the Paul Brune historic revitalization grants and the Save America's Treasures grant program. And as you can see from the chart, the HPF is having a pretty remarkable year on May 28 in the president's budget. We saw the president recommend to Congress 151.8 million for the historic preservation fund and FY 22. That is significant for a number of reasons. Again, it is more funding recommended from any administration in the past, so that is exciting. And it is also more than the authorized amount, the authorized amount for the HPF is 150 million per year. So we're seeing the administration recommend funding above the authorized amount that's that's noteworthy. Then, on about a month later on June 29. We saw the House Interior Appropriations Bill move and get passed by the House with 155.8 million for the HPF. This is already an uptick from the previous year's enacted level of 144 million. So that's already a noteworthy increase and these are these are the highest amounts we've seen supported for the HPF that we've seen. We see increases for SHPO funding, big increases for TIPO funding, and significant increases in funding for the HPF grant programs, particularly civil rights grants and Save America's Treasures. But the the significant news of the week, however, is the release of the Senate Interior Appropriations Bill that provided a stunning 180 million for the HPF. We saw a repeat of 10 million in funding for the Semi-Quincentennial Fund that honors our nation's 250th anniversary, as well as key priorities of Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick Leahy above what the preservation partners have recommended. So we're incredibly excited by that. But the key, another key piece of that is, for the first time, we're seeing congressionally directed spending. I'm not going to use the disfavored term of earmarks, but that is the colloquial there. In the Senate mark. So there are approximately 37 projects that are proposed for funding that total approximately 15 million of that 180. I think we can move to that next slide please. There are two project examples that were represented in the Senate mark, and of course that doesn't mean it's final, but this is a pretty extraordinary step to see direct funding to projects through the Historic Preservation Fund. And this is significant for a few reasons, one that we're seeing congressionally directed spending come back and be applied to the Historic Preservation Fund after more than 10 years of the earmark ban that hasn't been in place. And secondly, this is important for our efforts to reauthorize the Historic Preservation Fund. It expires in 2023. And so we have begun conversations with our champions on the hill about efforts to reauthorize that. And some of the things that we're considering are whether to make the authorization permanent, which would help us avoid having to campaign on a regular basis for reauthorization of the Historic Preservation Fund, which has been in place from, you know, 50 years. So, perhaps it's come time that we don't have to justify its value to the nation every few years so that would be an important step, but also increasing the authorization from 150 million. And, you know, had Congress appropriated looking to stay under that authorized amount. It might have made our case a bit more challenging to increase that 200 million a year 250 $300 million a year. We saw Congresswoman leisure Fernandez amend the invest act in the house to increase that authorization to 300 we want to build off that momentum. And now we're seeing the, the support for going above that authorized amount. And now that we have that Senate number out there. A very clear demonstration that Congress and the administration see the need as exceeding that authorized amount so I think that bodes well for our efforts to to increase that fund and initiate a very effective and compelling campaign for the Historic Preservation Fund and its reauthorization. Just one quick note on those projects I'll point out that they do range from about 100,000 up to 500,000. So these are just a few examples in Wheeling West Virginia. In Alaska, Ohio, and Virginia, we're seeing these great projects get the attention they deserve from from the federal government. I think we can go on to the next slide. One. This is this is the one pager if you haven't taken a look at that already the one pager for the HPF. Before getting to that one other piece I wanted to note was that the House Natural Resource Committee, as it put together its recommendations for the reconciliation bill included 75 million for Historic Preservation activities for the National Park Service. We are pushing to make sure that the Senate includes similar funding in its version of the bill. And again, this. While we don't know for sure how the what the intent was behind where this money would go within the National Park Service. Presumably a good chunk of it would go toward HPF, which would certainly help with with the grant programs which are by and large job creating bricks and mortar type projects, as well as the support that and typos need in the face of this influx of infrastructure investment. So for my my last piece here I did just want to flag this one pager includes a lot of history about the Historic Preservation Fund, what it does the role of shippos and typos. And that chart again of the grant funding, and then another chart which basically shows how funding has not kept pace with demand. So we look forward to your advocacy and support of the Historic Preservation Fund, and that will be a number of thank yous to the Senate, as you reach out there, and encouragement to move forward with that Senate So with that, I think we turn to our first Q&A. So let me take a look here, I see some conversation in the chat. Okay, yeah, is there a list of all the states seeking earmarked funding in the Senate proposal. Perfectly honest, we, we the trust didn't know that there would be the significant number of projects directly funded through the HPF. There is a list we can circulate that hopefully in the chat on this call. But we'll see what this means in the future will will states and entities be pushing projects in the future I would think so so we're excited to make everyone aware of this and to think just a little bit differently about the HPF going forward. Next question, is it appropriate to contact a congressperson and or senator in a state other than your own. For example, I live in Tennessee but there's an important project in Ohio that needs their attention. I can respond to that and if anybody else wants to jump in, I would say feel free. I think if you have a direct connection to that project or some direct relationship to it I think that would be certainly appropriate to reach out to that to a senator that isn't your elected representative to express support for it. As you've heard from Mr karnahan and from Patrick. The, the members do respond most to constituents so I would just keep that in mind as you do that outreach. Yeah, I would just suggest, you know, if you're able and you have local partners on your Ohio project. Right, it's always helpful to have them join you usually gets you either a quicker or a more attentive audience. And, but at the same time, if there's no one else to speak up for the project and you're the only option then you absolutely should see one more question, which is is there any. Additional info about the 75 million included on the one pagers. I don't believe we put that in. There isn't a ton to say about it other than the fact that it exists. Again, it doesn't specify how those funds would be spent. And of course, it faces the same challenge that the historic tax credit does in that when the committees were drafting these provisions they were drafting to be budget committees agreed upon 3.5 trillion dollar bill. So there'll be significant cuts so the messaging on that would be the same that that needs to stay in the Senate bill. But again it faces those same challenges it would need that that same advocacy intensity. But there isn't much more than that on on a description of it other than it exists. Good questions. Thanks everybody. I think we can now move to our next panel so I will turn it over to Kelly Hummerkauzer with Main Street. Thanks Kelly for being here. Thank you, Shaw for having us and for the very good pronunciation of my last name. As Shaw said I'm Kelly Hummerkauzer I'm the director of government relations at Main Street America. And we're pleased to be here today and tell you a little bit more about Main Street advocacy issues we're so pleased also that so many Main Streeters are involved with preservation advocacy through the past forward. I think we could go to the to the first slide. For any of you that might be unfamiliar with us Main Street America is a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and we've been helping to revitalize older and historic commercial districts for more than 40 years. So today we are a network of more than 1200 neighborhood based public private partnerships from, you know, urban to rural areas, who share, you know, this commitment to building stronger places through preservation based economic development. As Shaw alluded to you that means that some of our priorities are going to be outside of just the preservation box and I'm grateful to be able to tell you about that today and to see so many Main Streeters in the group here so we can go to our the next slide. Of the priorities. You know, right now we are of course looking at the historic tax credit and see how influential all of the provisions that Patrick outline would be to Main Street communities. So if you are advocating as part of preservation as part of passwords advocacy day or if you're advocating just regularly on behalf of Main Street, we, we encourage you highly to reach out to your senators, you know, just, just under 50% of all your $1 million or less in qualified expenses and so many of those happen with the support of community based organizations like Main Street programs, and all of the provisions would make those so much more easier to carry out in Main Street communities. So if there is any outreach that you are doing to your senators and you are Main Street program we always agree to hear about that too to make sure that we are taking account of it. We also have more resources on on historic tax credit advocacy on our website but of course Shoss provided you, Sean Patrick provided you with everything you might need for the upcoming lobby days. Again, as Shoss said, the, the, the programs and other priorities that Main Street has are might be in agencies that are just less familiar to the preservation, the preservation movement broadly. But we do believe that of course, you know, Main Street is kind of where where preservation comes into practice in communities. And we encourage the reuse of buildings through also kind of the active spaces that are built around them, and the active uses of those buildings including small businesses and of course during the pandemic. We saw so many other ways that Main Street programs were active and reaching out to their members of Congress to support, you know, small businesses and restaurants and other things that are important to us. So I would like to tell you a little bit more about two programs one under one as proposed under the reconciliation bill in HUD, and the others emerging opportunity through the economic development administration that are all opportunities to enhance our communities and, you know, through that to also enhance preservation, because of their kind of, you know, complimentary uses. Next slide please. So part of part of what makes Main Street districts vibrant is public places, you know, parks, storefronts, placemaking projects, community centers. Those are all things that enhance our communities and of course enhance our historic structures in our communities. You know, we call that civic infrastructure we're leaning on a definition of that would be civic infrastructure and we've been seeking ways to promote civic infrastructure through the infrastructure and reconciliation processes that have been ongoing. We're participating with a coalition of public space organizations, parks groups and other advocates for again civic infrastructure called percent for place. And, you know, really the goal that of that coalition is be thinking about in the infrastructure, you know, discussions, could we could we advocate for could we see 1% of that infrastructure funding going towards those place based needs for for our communities. So the answer that we've received when we've been outreaching to agencies into the White House was the Community Revitalization Fund. The Community Revitalization Fund was proposed by the White House in the Build Back Better agenda as a $10 billion fund for civic infrastructure grants through HUD. So this program has gone through some changes as negotiations have continued. It emerged out of the house, the house process reduced in size at 7.5 billion and merged with another program. So now it's called the Community Restoration and Revitalization Fund but that slight name change and the slight change into the program structure to merge it more with housing really doesn't take away from its, its core ability to fund projects that are essential to Main Street. So we are really working directly with HUD with the White House with Senate offices to try to see this included in the final reconciliation package. We know that of course many programs are going to be reduced in scale and size but we hope that this can be included. And what makes it so wonderful for Main Street is that it would offer the opportunity for Main Street programs to be the direct applicants into this into this funding for projects for projects in their communities with the assistance of CDFI or with their city's help as a fiduciary agent so that we could build the capacity of Main Street programs and there'd be additional technical assistance provided by HUD. And then would help them work on the projects that are most important to them. And it does include direct references to Main Streets and Storefronts as part of the applicable uses. And so we're very pleased to see that we also know that of course housing is such a huge priority for our communities right now, both the lack of housing and the lack of workforce housing, and this would be one way to accomplish that of course another way would be with more historic tax credit projects that produce upper floor units in downtown district so all good ways to do that but we are continuing our advocacy for this as part of the reconciliation package. Next slide please. Back one please. Another priority for Main Streets has been over the past two years really or since the beginning of the pandemic has been to see how Main Street communities can better access funding through the Economic Development Administration. And many of you may have participated in that push in previous iterations of our advocacy over the course of the past year Main Street has been reaching out to really advocate for existing funding as part of pandemic response packages to be utilized for Main Street. And we have seen some applicable uses of that, but we're also looking to the upcoming EDA reauthorization process to offer a specific opportunity to really make an adjustment to, to how EDA funds in order to make the programs that it is working on more more applicable to Main Street communities. And we are members of the EDA stakeholders coalition coalition and as members of that coalition we are supportive of the opportunities in the reauthorization process to kind of create more capacity building through EDA that would get money to communities that haven't traditionally been able to access EDA funding and to create more connectivity between EDA's regional model for economic development and some of the more disconnected economic development organizations on the ground, including in in some circumstances our Main Street districts who aren't able to establish those relationships for funding. Main Street communities support a diverse, diverse array of small businesses. And we know from recent data that we're able to access from the paycheck protection program that Main Street communities just are accredited 1200 programs supported over 1 million jobs that were that were included in those locations alone. So, you know, there's a main streets are huge job centers and those are diverse jobs as well. It's not just retail Main Street programs serve restaurants and accommodations professional services, health care and retail but you know many of those are being served there. And all of those different industries and businesses benefit from the place based support that Main Street programs offer creating places for, you know, obviously redevelop properties places where people want to visit places where it can combine different types of business mix to create a thriving district. Main Street programs have also had negative impacts of course do the pandemic but also due to that lack of ability long term to kind of access some of that programming and sponsorship for those projects. So we are seeking now to create a new program through the reauthorization process that would be aimed to support specifically business district entities. And you know what you all need to know if you're advocating throughout the lobby days or at any other time is just to make sure that you are aware of the fact and making staffers aware of the fact that the EDA reauthorization process does offer an opportunity to promote, a preservation aligned priority, which is really creating the impetus to have our Main Street districts filled with vital active businesses, and EDA has the ability to help us to do that. And we are looking forward to telling you more about this as the as the reauthorization process comes into focus more it should be happening over the next few months. Next slide please. I think we're going backwards but. So that's, that's just a couple of the things that Main Street America is working on in addition to preservation priorities and we look forward to making sure that we are communicating with you all as preservation advocates, more about how to, you know, align with those and make sure that you're including the messages for Main Street in your outreach to offices. So thank you very much. Hi, I'll go ahead. Hi everyone in this last section. We wanted to highlight some of the legislative work related to preservation priority issues in the House Natural Resources Committee and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Switch to the next slide please. Issues fall into the part of our portfolio where we focus on preserving historic and cultural resources on public lands. A big component of that work is drafting legislative proposals, helping to advance legislation and providing advocacy resources to the preservation community. We also work that we do when these issues intersect with some of the annual appropriations work and also some other policy and regulatory issues. We've definitely seen strong interest on Capitol Hill for preservation issues related to public lands, especially over the last two to three years. The work in collaboration with our partners has resulted in some really big wins. One of those we've covered on previous webinars, which was the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act, where that invested about $9.5 billion to repair historic and other assets of the National Park Service and other federal agencies, along with fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund at 900 million annually. The reset and start of the new Congress and administration earlier this year, we have a full slate of about 18 pieces of federal legislation that we're actively engaged on. And the outlook appears great so far. There's been a steady stream of committee and floor activity on many of these bills, a lot of positive conversations by members of Congress at the hearings and markups. So we are hopeful that we'll have additional preservation wins in the near future. And as all of these bills move through the legislative process there progress has been a little staggered depending on the date of introduction and other items on Congress's agenda so we're focusing our messaging the next three weeks in on three bills in order. And all of those are highlighted on a new one pager that may have already been shared in the chat with you but we can, if not we can, we can add that. Next slide please. The first of the three bills that we wanted to highlight is HR 3600 which is the Route 66 National Historic Trail Designation Act. HR has been one of the focal points of our Route 66 National Treasure, a campaign that's taken place over the last two or three years really highlighting the preservation needs of Route 66. And thank you to all of you who have been part of the over 64,000 people who have pledged their support on a petition supporting that preservation work. This particular bill is led by Representative Darren will hood from Illinois and Representative Grace Napolitano from California, and it would designate Route 66 as a national historic trail and a new unit of the National Park system. And that national historic straight trail would stretch through eight states, starting in Chicago Illinois and ending in Santa Monica, California. It's a very popular bipartisan bill and actually passed the House unanimously in 2018 and due to a number of delays related to some court activity. It was just now reintroduced in this Congress over the Memorial Day weekend and we've really used the summer as an opportunity to highlight the theme of enjoying travel and heritage tourism to continue building support for these amazing places. So you haven't already, please take advantage of the resources on our website. I think Prius shared a few of those in the chat. And please send a letter to your member of Congress, especially if you're in one of those eight states bisected by Route 66, and I will type those into the chat shortly. Next slide please. It's now my pleasure to introduce Dan Sakura, who's going to talk about two key preservation issues including the Amache legislation. Dan is the principal at Sakura conservation strategies and his expertise includes over 25 years of experience collaborating with partners nationwide to permanently protect nationally significant properties including years of experience in senior positions on Capitol Hill and in previous administrations. His work also includes successfully completing projects to preserve Japanese American confinement sites, African American civil rights sites, national parks and public lands via administrative actions legislation and other work. And so Dan, I now turn it over to you. Great Pam. Thank you so much I really appreciate the opportunity to be with you today. And I'd especially like to acknowledge the great commitment of the National Trust for Historic Preservation to tell the diversity of America's stories including stories relating to racial justice and healing. Next slide. A little bit about myself. I have a personal family connection to the Minidoka relocation center located in Idaho. There's a picture of my grandparents and my dad and uncles who were incarcerated during World War two, simply for the fact of being Japanese American. But the during World War two the US government had a policy to forcibly relocate Japanese over 110,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast, by creating an exclusion zone, and creating a vast network of essentially prisons, including 10 large relocation centers, and Amachi located in Southeast Colorado is one of them and we're very grateful for the opportunity to talk about bipartisan legislation currently pending in the United States Senate to designate Amachi as a national historic site, along with Manzanar Minidoka, the Amachi Lake and Hana Uli Uli sites in which are units of the National Park System. Next slide. So just to acknowledge that the Amachi site is located on the ancestral homeland of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. The Park Service, if this is added to the National Park System would manage Amachi located in Southeast Colorado. The Amachi Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, which commemorates the terrible massacre of several hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal members. Sand Creek is a tributary of the Arkansas River, which was the, which parallels the Santa Fe trail there's some really great historic property along the Santa Fe trail. Next slide. The Amachi relocation center was named after a remarkable woman, Amachi Ochani Prowers, Cheyenne Indian, whose father was murdered at the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. Her life and her husband's life, John Prowers, is told through some really remarkable historic preservation work in Boggsville, Colorado nearby. Here's a picture of her of the John and Amachi Prowers home. Next slide please. So during World War Two, the Amachi relocation center was where over 9000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in barracks. You can see a picture of the barracks on the left there. A map of the property of the site shows how vast it was. It was one of the largest cities in Colorado at the time. And you can see the blocks of barracks and the camp cemetery. Next slide. So one of the really amazing features of Amachi was the fact that it had the highest percentage of military volunteers. These are mostly Japanese American men, but also women. 953 joined the military out of camp, even though their families were incarcerated behind barbed wire. And Amachi also had 31 soldiers who were killed in action, who paid the ultimate price. Today, Amachi serves as a memorial. It's where folks that died in camp are still buried. Next slide. And after the war, the US government said that folks could not return immediately back to their homes in California, where they were originally from, but they could settle in the Midwest and most settled in Colorado, some in the southwest. And so what happened during the war was the government essentially destroyed what are called Nihonmachi or Japan towns on the west coast. And the Japanese American community was spread across the country in a diaspora. They're shown here in the blue lines. Next slide. So Amachi today, here's an aerial shot. You can see the outlines of the foundations. There are very few original contributing structures located on the sites. Most of the sites, most of the structures have been moved to like farms, nearby farms and that sort of thing. The site is currently managed by a local partnership through the Amachi Preservation Society, John Hopper, who's been a real guardian angel for the site for several decades. Next slide. So Amachi is primarily a place for healing, for learning, for Japanese Americans to have reunions and for other, the public at large to learn about this terrible chapter in our history. Every year the Amachi survivors and descendants organized a reunion or a pilgrimage. And it's a place where we can honor those who are no longer with us and to show our children and grandchildren and pass those stories of camp life down to the next generations. Next slide. So it's been a really remarkable partnership of partners as from all over Colorado and the United States. I'd especially acknowledge the work of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Barb Paul, who is the Western Regional Director for many years out of Colorado led a successful effort in 2006 to designate the site as a national historic landmark of finding a national significance. Preservation Inc. has done really remarkable work restoring historic structures with financial support from the National Park Service. And I'd like to acknowledge the National Parks Conservation Association, which has led the advocacy effort in partnership with Pam and her team. I'm currently serving as an advisor to NPCA. And there's also been great work with the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation, which tells us helps the National Park Service interpret the story of the Sand Creek Massacre site. Next slide. The legislation, we're very pleased back in 2019 Congress passed bipartisan legislation to SPAT to authorize the National Park Service to conduct a special resource study. And the Park Service has started work on that study has had a series of public meetings has been outstanding public support. And then in 2001, Congressman Joe Ngoose, Democrat of Colorado worked with Congressman Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, whose district includes a Monty in eastern Colorado to introduce HR 2497. And we're very pleased that the full house passed this bill by about a 416 to two. 8 out of 50 congressional delegations voted unanimously for the bill. And in the Senate, Senators Bennett and Hickenlooper from Colorado have introduced companion legislation. And we're grateful that the committee had a hearing on October 6. And right now our focus is on the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee markup we know there's a number of other bills which you will hear about later Brown v. Board that are in a similar situation. In terms of Senate passage. We're hoping potentially it could pass as a standalone legislation we believe there's enough bipartisan support on both sides for that potentially could also be packaged as part of a larger bill, potentially an omnibus public lands bill along with other high priority legislation. Next slide. So in terms of our, our asks and we're really appreciate the opportunity to, to present these to you. One is to thank our lead Senate champions Senators Bennett and Hickenlooper from Colorado they've done remarkable work. We just want to kind of keep up the great momentum. And then in terms of the energy committee, Senator King is the chairman of the park subcommittee. If there's an opportunity for folks remain to reach out to him we'd be grateful. The bill enjoys strong bipartisan support from Senator Barrasso the ranking member of the full committee, Senator Danes from Montana the ranking of the subcommittee. And we also have some very interesting connections to other members of the committee so Senator Marshall from Kansas. Japanese Americans were incarcerated at the Leavenworth federal prison for their views, and in Mississippi at Camp Shelby members of the Amachi. They were also joined out of Amachi's trained at Camp Shelby in Mississippi so there's a connection there. And in North Dakota there's a there's a site that was a prison for men that were separate from their families so there there, there is a lot of connections with other members on the committee. We're also hoping to reach out to Senate leadership Senator McConnell. And there's actually connections because folks left Amachi and settled in Kentucky. And so we're hoping to reach out to him and his team and encourage Swift Senate passage. Next slide. So in terms of the timing or questions. February 2022 marks the 80th anniversary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signing of executive order 9066 in 1942. And this is significant because many of the camp survivors, Bob Fuchigami, who's in Denver who's been a leader in this effort are in their, like, late 80s or late 90s. So time is really of the essence and we're very hopeful that we can get this bill either standalone or as part of another packet broader package to the President's desk for his signature by February 2022. Next slide. Switching gears here. I'm going to, we're moving up to Idaho. This is a slide in south central Idaho north of Twin Falls on a line. If you start in Twin Falls Idaho and drive up towards Ketchum Haley Sun Valley area. The proposal from LS power, which is a New York private equity firm to build 400 massive wind towers, wind turbines, located as close as two miles to the Minidoka National Historic Site. I'd like to acknowledge the really outstanding work of the National Trust Betsy Merritt Christopher Cody who just submitted public comments during scoping, which were due yesterday. I have a specific ask for this project, but I will say that we're, there's a panel on Asian American Pacific Islander historic preservation in two weeks on November 2nd as part of the fast forward, conference and I'll be speaking more about the Minidoka project for if you need any information. I'm an advisor to the friends of Minidoka, which is a nonprofit based in Idaho it's a National Park Service friends group, and its website is minidoka.org. So thank you so much for this opportunity I really appreciate your time and commitment to telling the full story of America through historic preservation, including new units of the National Park system thank you. Thanks Dan. It was an amazing presentation and thank you for sharing those images with us and really the compelling case for why preserving the story of the Machi side is so important. It's been a pleasure to work with you and all of the partners on this issue, and look forward to a successful result in this Congress on that legislation. We also have the pleasure of introducing a Leah Jones, who has been one of the driving forces on a key piece of preservation legislation. As you know Jones is the judiciary aid to US Senator Chris Coons from Delaware and has been on Senator Coons of staff in their DC office for almost four years. He's a graduate of Delaware State University and has a wealth of knowledge on all things Delaware and the legislative process. It's really been a pleasure to work with a Leah the past few years on a project regarding the history of the Brown v Board of Education court case. We can switch to the next slide and I'll turn it over to a Leah. Thank you so much, Pam. As you know, Senator Coons is very excited about this important legislation, and which he in our office believe it's just an important step and remembering the painful but the significant impact the separate but equal doctrine had on our nation. We've found for the past two years the National Trust, our office and representative Plyburn's office have been working together to develop legislation that would tell the full story of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case of Brown v Board of Education. The Senate by camera bill was introduced last fall and it has 100% co sponsorship from all of the House and Senate offices representing the expansion sites. We reintroduced this bill earlier this year as a just commemoration of Black History Month. So we were really excited about that. Specifically, what this bill would do is highlight the history. Several years, decades ago, the Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site in Tameka, Kansas was established as a unit of the National Park system. However, what many people don't know is that that Brown v Board of Education case was actually five consolidated cases court cases and so Senator Coons himself actually grew up just a few hundred yards from one of the sites connected to this case. But it wasn't until law school that he learned of the school significance. Each of those cases and the unique stories from these communities tell a compelling story about the civil rights movement and the struggle for educational equity. The bill would expand the existing Kansas site to include related sites in South Carolina and it would also establish National Park Service affiliated sites in Delaware, Virginia and Washington DC. In Delaware, the bill will create National Park Service affiliated sites for three locations. One of these locations being Howard High School which is located in Wilmington, Delaware. And it's also the only place that Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in Delaware. It was the all black schools which plain and the plaintiffs and belt and be gavered were forced to travel, and it has been designated as a national historic landmark in recognition of its national significance. The Howard High School, it is now the Howard High School of Technology, and it is an active school administered by the Newcastle County vocational technical school district. The other another site in Delaware would be what is now playmont community center which was then the all white playmont high school in this school denied plaintiffs admission in the belt and be gaver case. And it is currently, like I said a community center administered by the Branding wine community resource resource Council incorporated. Finally, we have what was the whole cast and school 107 C for whole cast and colored school with the all black school and whole cast and that one of the plaintiffs and belt and be gavered was required to attend with no public transportation provided. And so her lawyer, Louis L. Reading, who also helped argue the brown people case, said, I'm not just going to get you away to the school, I'm going to get you into a school where you could have a better education. And we're really excited about the Delaware case because of the five consolidated cases in brown be bored. The Delaware decision was the only decision affirmed by the Supreme Court. It's a great history for us and one that we'd love to share with others. We are pleased and excited with the significant progress that this bill has made so far. Both in the house and the Senate, the natural resource committees subcommittees or national parks had successful markups, and we were very excited about that the house markup happened in April, whereas the Senate markup happened in June. And we just continued working with the National Trust National Park Service. We've been working on mapping collecting more information from the various communities, and just preparing the next stages of the legislation. So we've been in constant communication with staff for senators mansion and Barasso on national resource on natural resources. We expect to mark up soon. We may get one in the house before the Senate, but we just keep working with them and pushing for it. So, prior to the markup we're going to gather representatives from each of the congressional offices ahead of committee activity, and then following the markups and following committee activity which hopefully they will all just pass with fine colors. So we expect to get a floor vote on this legislation. We just expect this bill will continue to receive continued bipartisan support. We have a broad bipartisan coalition on this bill and you know we're just really hoping that we can just continue to move this bill in the 117th Congress, and we are beyond excited to get this important legislation passed into law. I really appreciate the update and it's been great to work with your office on this I think we're all excited about the progress so far and we'll be sure to share with all of you information as soon as we receive it. And I'll now turn it over to show. Okay well thank you everyone for joining us today. I don't believe I see any questions so we must have conveyed everything perfectly to everyone. Enter those questions now if you have them. We've got a number of great experts here to answer any questions. I'm going to manage at the moment. And let's see some of those questions if you've got them. It's been a long week. Looks like folks are a little quiet today that's not a problem either. Again the record the webinar is being recorded and so you'll be able to revisit. And as your advocacy ramps up. Feel free as always to reach out to the National Trust Government Relations staff with any questions that come to mind. I do see a question. Question is to Leah, is there a short summary of the legislation. Yes, there is. You can find a short summary on the senator's website at coons dot senate dot gov. You just type in brown be bored, it'll pop up. And it also has links to the actual bill text, and you can just get a lot of information there. So, great, thank you, Leah. And then just take the opportunity to thank everyone for joining today, and for our really great panel joining us. We appreciate your taking the time to jump on and describe for the preservation community some of the key priorities, moving through Congress right now. It's clear that they're all doing extraordinary work and it was a wonderful presentations by everyone so thank you again to the panel for for taking the time today. I'll just a note, a final note that for the advocacy that will be occurring during past forward November 2 through fifth. We're hitting at a great time to get it be getting our message up to the hill. This is going to be right in the midst of a likely decision making time, but still early enough to, to have an impact and raise the profile of historic preservation priorities. So, again, thank you for your interest and engagement. Thank you for your ongoing engagement, particularly over these next number of weeks. But thank you for joining today. And feel free to follow up again with the government relations staff as we as we move forward. But thank you again, and have a wonderful day.