 Isn't it great to be in District 2? I know the other districts are fine and healthy and moving about, but District 2 is at the apex of a total renaissance. How about that? The mayor wanted to come today to share with each of you, this is our second town hall meeting. And he's coming today to share with each of you what the City of Columbia is doing, has been doing, and has been working on. It's a great possibility and a grand possibility for our mayor to continue his work as we continue to push forward in the expansion of the famously hot city. So we welcome today our mayor. We welcome with new energy, with new insights, and approach to creativity. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It's yours. I wanted to go ahead and introduce, you know, obviously you know Dr. Anatee Bustles, our Councilwoman at large. I'd like you to say a few words before we finish. Hi, everyone. Very excited. Thank you. Hello. Very excited to be here with you all today. I have the pleasure of sitting next to Councilman McDowell during our meetings, and I can tell you, we have sometimes a little too much fun up there. And you know, we both share a passion for helping our community and helping people. And I think District 2 is very special in that it's such a diverse district, all the way from Main Street to, I know we have Belvedere representing Colonial Heights, some really great neighborhoods, and it's so wonderful to see all of you all here. I have the pleasure of representing the entire city. So if you need extra help or, you know, Councilman McDowell's busy, feel free to reach out to me, and I'm happy to be of service. Today's a really special day because Mayor Rickerman has put together these town halls to provide information in a timely and transparent manner. One of the things I love about him is that he really cares about different perspectives when he's making decisions, even when he doesn't agree with them. And so what you see here is very much a result of all of us working together under his leadership to make things happen. And so I hope that you all keep that in mind when you have a perspective or something you want to share, he's always willing to listen and meet, and that's the way that we get better as a city. So with that, I'll pass it back over to you. Well, thank you. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for being here tonight. It's exciting as the first of five town halls. So we decided not to have a seat in the city and really had an opportunity to go to each district. When I was first elected in 2004, we actually went every quarter to a different district. And we had our meetings there. And we will have our meetings in those districts so that we have an opportunity to come to neighborhoods and have conversations. And so tonight is really about an open dialogue. We want to have some conversations around, hey, these are the things that are going on in Columbia right now. Kind of an overview of the city-wide and then focus on district two. Some folks submitted some questions. We do have some postcards out here. So if something sparks your interest, there's something you want to ask later on. Put that postcard in so that we can take that and get back to you and put something in writing so that you have a concrete answer to what you're looking for. They're located in the back. If you leave one, if you didn't get one, so please take advantage of that. As you know, Mayor Benjamin, he adopted one Columbia. And we still believe that, that we are one Columbia. And every business, public service, neighborhood, district, law enforcement, firefighter, government official, school, church, citizen are all part of the city. And you can't talk about one without the other. Can't have a strong business community without strong neighborhoods. You can't have strong neighborhoods without the business community. They go hand in hand. So it takes a unified team for us to achieve the success we envision. It's our job. And I say ours. We will not hear a lot of I from this crowd. We are together working as city council, but we also work hand in hand, not only with our staff, but our business partners, our community to make sure that we're laying the groundwork for growth and development across this city. One of the negatives, unfortunately, have been about our community was collaboration. So we committed to have partnerships to work with folks and bring people to the table to take not only their ideas, their complaints, their criticisms, but their solutions, their innovations, their thoughts, and use them as we're discussing things and moving forward. And we're not always going to agree. It's okay. That's the way it should be. But there are opportunities for us to move Columbia. And our goal collectively is to have the number one city in South Carolina. Because we are. I truly believe this community is one of the greatest communities. I chose to live here 35 years ago. And I made that decision to stay. I met my wife. I raised my kids. I started my business here. And I really selfishly want our kids, our grandkids to have every opportunity they can right here. They should not have to go to another city to find what they could find here. But we also, at the same time, got to tell our story. And part of that is taking new approaches, trying things differently. You're going to see us as a council and a city government continue to try different things. And we may not, it may not work. Things may not always work out the way we plan. But I think what you're going to see is we're going to learn something and we're going to continue to move forward to improve our community. And we can't do everything. And we can't be responsible for everything. But we have an obligation to be part of everything. We may be the seed that gets planted. We may help put somebody's position as we've talked about our violence prevention office of being the quarterback and bringing all of those folks together to work together as groups to improve our community so that the efforts that are being made in our community are being done with great results. So we have milestones. We have accountability. We have the ability to work together collaboratively, not only with our community partners, but our regional partners. Because today there would not be a scout motors. Had the state, the city and the county gone together to attract that investment that's going to provide 4,000 jobs in phase one, close to four billion dollars in investment into an industry that's not only growing, but a way to benefit our community long term. Because companies like VW have never closed a plant in any city that they've gone to invest in. They've had all of their plants stay open and they invest not only in the city, involved culturally, socially, but they make an investment to improve the community the better than they found it. And I think that's the type of corporate customer or relationship that we want to have. So we'll continue before I go any further. I do want to take an opportunity to thank my colleagues who every day work hard with us together, but also I want to take an opportunity to thank our senior staff and our city employees who were here. So if y'all would, if you work for the city stand up please and get a round of applause. And I say that because we can't talk about getting things done if we're not working together as a staff and investing in our city is our number one. When we decided to pick these last two budget years, we made the commitment that we're investing in the city of Columbia first and foremost. That means in our people, that means in the technology, into our neighborhoods, into infrastructure improving things. Finlay Park, the greenway, access to the riverfront to open it up by partnering and having a conversation with Dominion Energy, opening 200 acres that had not been opened to the public before for now we have an opportunity to access this great asset and use it. Love our block grants that we put back into place, community promotions we put back into place. But we continue to move forward as a community all the way across. So it's one piece at a time. If it's public art we're talking about, it's investment into our storm brains, replacing drain pipes, continuing to move forward and working with the state, a big partner to deal with the roads and everything else. But as we talk about the snapshot today we talk about all the projects and before you came in we had scrolling there over 150 things going on and 100 of them were on the screen. It represents millions of dollars spent in our community, thousands of our employees, hard work and hours invested, lots of innovation, input from citizens like you in all forms, emails, phone calls, meetings. But at the end of the day we all have an obligation to be part of the community. And one of the things you're going to hear us talk a lot about is being part of the puzzle. Because Columbia is a puzzle and every one of you are a part of that. Every piece of a puzzle has multiple sides and fits different ways, but touches different folks and brings them together to improve. You don't want a puzzle with missing pieces. We want all pieces of the puzzle put together. So as we continue to work together I want to start off talking a little bit about public service and essential functions. Obviously the city departments are constantly working to ensure the city is clean, safe, enjoyable and accessible for all. Public services are much more than water, everybody just assumes water, but we have 17 different departments that provide some type of service to our community. 9-1-1 street divisions, animal, engineering, solid waste, but beautification, billing, municipal courts, planning and zoning, how we're planning for today and how we're planning for the future so that we can be prepared for the onslaught of people who are coming to our community. Because they realize what a great place we have. We are the number one, rated number one city in South Carolina to live in right now. And I want us to continue to climb that ladder to be the number one all the way around. And that's because of all of us. When I tell people about Columbia, South Carolina, they're like, why don't y'all tell anybody about your city? If we had what you had, we'd be standing on top of the mountain screaming. But guess what folks, that's what we are doing. We are doing that and I'm excited about it and we'll talk a little bit more about as we get into it on the marketing side. But we made the change, 150,000 water meters were changed and moved to new digital so that we can tell people when there's something going on. We have the ability to go back and fix records. Are we perfect yet? No. Are we going to continue to improve? Yes. We cut down on our call wait times. And you know how we did that? We actually went and listened to the employees. You know what they told us? The biggest call volumes are during the week. We can use an answering service for a couple of hours. Let's bring those folks in and let's have more people at our fingertips today when we need most of it. We were averaging over 1,500 calls a day. I think the number was. That was a huge volume in dealing with problems and we didn't have enough staff. Now we have the right staff. We have leadership in there being able to make decisions because we gave them the tools, the technology that they thought they could make a decision based on what your needs are. Is that continuing to improve? Yes. And we're going to continue to do that. Obviously, a significant reduction in our work orders. And a year ago, February, we stood up and we told everybody we have a problem. But we also provided a solution and that solution was working together with our small businesses through contracts to open it up so they could help us solve the problem. We had almost 6,800 work orders behind and we dwindled that way down by understanding some of the hurdles that were put into place obviously between the way we operate, miscommunications, how we stumbled in our own system and we went and proved that. We learned from our employees learning from our staff management how we take those hurdles and get rid of them. Get them out of the way by understanding that if we did a process to get landscaper that when we needed a landscaper to help us with emergency services it didn't need the same level of insurance that cost more than the job did because it wasn't about sidewalks it was about landscaping and fixing people's yards. It's the little things that prohibited us from actually getting that list done and so we changed all of that by listening. I had an opportunity to meet with almost every one of our employees on a one-on-one basis in a group setting where they had an opportunity to talk about issues, concerns and a lot of it was around procedure and how we could do things better and how we could serve you our customer better in a more timely manner more efficiently by changing some of the procedures that we had and I think that was probably one of the best lessons we had. Do you want to add anything to that? One of the primary things of course as it relates to our city is the opportunity to be inclusive in our conversations. Our conversation has generated itself in a posture where folk not only listen but they are understanding what the story is and being able to share that story. One of the things that's important to all of us is making sure we're able to follow along when one of you all contact us or tell us that you have an issue or concern and so along with some of the changes that have been made along you have to wait for someone to answer your phone call for water related services you're also going to start to see that we're improving the way in which we can track some of the requests that you all put in so that way if you give us a call we can say it's right here this is where it's going next we'll keep you posted on when it's moving that way and I think that that really speaks to the importance of making sure we provide excellent customer service as a city. Very much so safety is a big part of what we work on every day and it's what keeps most of us up at night Columbia Police Department released the gun violence assessment action plan in August of 2023 with a renewed strategic focus and this really is a big part of our basis so that we can focus our resources to make sure that we're taking care of those areas first and foremost and we're addressing the issue from a multifaceted that means we understand behavior, people and places but then that allows us to get to that next step which is prevention intervention and unfortunately law enforcement at some point so we'll continue to work on using that data to get through that's why we have the real crime center now we've got more cameras installed across the city that are being monitored live today more than just being recorded we began Operation Hope and Order which has garnered us unfortunately 173 arrests but what it's done is it's really helped us have a better sense in our community and allow folks to feel more relieved and safe and we're going to continue to work on that we're obviously investing in recruitment we're obviously investing in our police department if it's not just in salaries and police cars but in clinicians we have five clinicians that work at our pathway units they're there to help with folks that are more challenged both in mental and addiction areas which is a big part of our service calls downtown helping them make sure that we can get them to the services and the help that's available for that them in our community and then obviously code enforcement is probably one of our biggest functions that's now under the police department completed over 8,000 inspections everything from working on trash cans being left out to people not taking care of their property and their neighborhoods and this is a lot of work folks code enforcement is not the easiest thing for us to get done because it takes sometimes a long time to follow through a case and back and forth and getting it done but we want to continue to invest in that code enforcement and continue to find a way to beautify our community houses that are condemned getting it through the system so that we can rebuild and get families back in our neighborhood just like we're doing here in district 2 both in the Booker Washington Heights neighborhood and in Mark Luther King neighborhood we're doing in the Belmont area we're starting there with 10 to 12 homes on lots that were owned there but building back in district 1 and district 2 we lost population and we want to bring that population back. These are incredible historic neighborhoods but we have to do it from multifaceted it's not only the investment in the infrastructure, public art into housing but into public safety and public safety obviously between fire and police but it also is public works making sure all the lighting is working all the trees and golden acres are cut so that it's clean when people come through it keeps power lines from going down all that is included in public safety so when we're looking at something we're looking at it from a wide lens not just from a single specific issue because it's a multiple faceted multiple department issue when we go out to look at things. Did you want to add anything? I just wanted to note one of the changes in response to some of the concerns we heard from the community was to address abandoned vehicles that happened earlier last year as many of you said it's not only an eyesore but a public health hazard so we updated our code enforcement ordinance to include those abandoned vehicles and you've probably started to see our code enforcement come out and site or take it those that are leaving those abandoned vehicles in our neighborhoods. The other thing of course as it relates to our code enforcement there has been much conversation as it relates to dogs and animals animals that are of vicious nature and of course animal services now has looked at that and looking at those kinds of things to make sure that it's not happening next door to someone. The other important thing of course is our code enforcers are being very intentional about identifying areas that are in need of real for lack of a better word a ticket ought to be given and of course that is taking place areas that was not being code enforcement enforced of course those enforcers now are doing the due diligence thing. I think the other thing is part of that code enforcement part of an STR registration so that we know where short-term rentals are but we've always had long-term but it's a very important fact for people to understand is that there's probably almost 25,000 long-term rentals in our community. We have 46,237 houses in the city and you just heard the number the majority of those are rentals so part of our program that we're continuing to best in is to get more home ownership an opportunity for people to have home ownership but also have to understand that we have to think differently. We spend a lot of time investing and pushing for certain size single family houses but we have a real need for senior housing options we have a real need for quadriplexes townhomes condominiums and the studies that are being done around the country are showing us that we have to invest differently for different needs in the future because 85% of our housing needs which we need 16,000 units over the next decade in our community so the housing authority is helping us with 1600 still got a lot more to do so being creative and I say that because it's an emphasis for us we traveled to Charlotte met with a group of hedge fund, retired hedge fund directors who put a plan together on how they could stabilize rents, a way they could make investments in attainable housing across their city by using corporate funding in a good will profit sharing program that made it sustainable so that they could really help community not only for those who needed a rental property but people who have an opportunity to have an attainable house that they could buy and build wealth so home ownership is the quickest way to create individual wealth in generational wealth and that needs to be a focus obviously we talked a little bit about the office of violence crime prevention I'm excited to say it's funded and staffed there's a lot of efforts around our city and our community but we needed a quarterback to bring it together we're very excited to have Mr. Fordham part of our team I think he's done an incredible job so far in getting out and meeting and he's learned so much and he's really excited but he's opened our eyes to other grant opportunities things that we can do to get more into the community so that we can start on that intervention in that prevention piece long early and more sustainable so that we don't end up with the law enforcement piece and I think that's our ultimate goal and as we know over the last year we had an 18% increase in shootings and unfortunately too many of those are young people 93% of them are young people under the age of 20 but when you talk about those things you can't not talk about the things that came out of that discussions when we were going down that path Christie Savage and Mr. Day pushing a skilled training program that they got a grant now through Truist Bank scholarship young gentlemen and ladies into HVAC training into electrical training they go through a program they get a set of tools and they got a job waiting on them the average salary of these young folks who are coming through that program is $25 an hour so just put that in perspective that's $42,000 a year without overtime and an opportunity to continue to learn and have an advancement that either can stay with the company or start their own Regina Williams is in here Regina has been taking this time to teach people how to do an interview how to dress working in her community in so many different facets but what's interesting about that program is there more jobs available in our community right now if we can show people how to go get them good paying jobs because we got opportunities here when you need to make sure people understand it and then obviously one of the other great youth programs is everybody know what jobs for American graduate the JAG program is the JAG program is probably the best program at Richland one and for years it was at CA Johnson it was the only school that we had it and it's a program that walks through with young students when they're freshman year all the way to their freshman year in college to ensure that these are kids who probably without the help may not make it and we had an opportunity this year to partner with Richland one and our commissioner is here good to see you ma'am thanks for being here Mrs. Clyburn is here and we really enjoyed the opportunity to sit down and work with it there's 25 schools that signed up he would pay for 75% and then so we went to Richland one and said if you'll partner with us let's go after it we got one for every one of the high schools here in Richland one so all of our schools had this program today why that's significant and why it's so important that's potentially 5 to 600 kids that may have been lost that may now have an opportunity to work with a mentorship, work through a program get the needs they have and somebody being there to help get them through and I think if I'm right commissioner that program was 92, 94% success rate is C.A. Johnson so think about now we got it in every all 8 high schools within the city limits of Columbia South Carolina so some of the things we're talking about collaboration, partnerships this is exactly what we're talking about and why it's so exciting as we continue to talk about public safety we can't not talk about public safety without talking about fire fire chiefs not here counting heads so that's a good thing good to see this crowd but you know they're inspecting every school in the city they're inspecting every business they did 227 we're talking about community to make sure they're the first ones they're our first responders to so many things if it's accidents if it's service calls but they also needed funding issues and we went through that in our budget to make sure that they got second set of bunker gear we're working on proving the houses building a new firehouse we're in the middle of working with our fire consultant all the coverage area and say where are our gaps how do we fill that gap to not only protect our firefighters but protect our citizens and that means a lot because that saves our citizens on insurance that saves businesses on insurance and let's say at the end of the day the most important thing it saves lives and we couldn't do it without our staff working together with our fire chief we had a couple issues this year where we really lean on the fire chief and the rest of our fire marshals and our firefighters to help us in some sticky situations where we needed boots on the ground to make sure that we could take care of our citizens obviously homelessness is one of our biggest issues that we're we're investing in heavily and one of the initiatives we put together was the rapid shelter Colombia so far we've transitioned over 28 individuals out of the program successfully we put 50 pallet homes we sat down with the idea of investing in these pallet homes and our city manager Teresa stand up you got a good clap for this she got with our staff and in 90 days we went from procurement to build to having those units up and available for people to live in and why it's important is each one of those units has space in it has a heater it has air conditioning why is that important because folks who are challenged with mental issues addiction or so forth do not do well in a group setting and we had to have a solution where we could actually take folks and get them individually where they had a place that they felt safe and that they could then get into the services the wraparound services that were out there in the community are 50 units enough but we had to start somewhere we had to start getting in there and being a solution oriented council to find out how do we get to the next step long term we got to have a one stop shop and I use that term very loosely because we need a place where we have not only urgent care but physical therapy that we have clinicians on staff a place where you can get a meal you can get your medical services but you also have a place to spend the night you have a bed a room that is yours so that you can continue with the help that you need because transitioning from homelessness is a lot they say that somebody who's been homeless for three to six months it takes a year to year and a half to help them transition out of homelessness that's an investment the majority of our folks that we're seeing today and we probably have more homelessness than we've ever seen a lot of us contributed to addiction mental health and so those are the big pieces that we want to focus on so making sure that we're getting people the help that they need in a setting so we're talking about something where you have all these pieces where he comes once or twice a week to help people get their IDs because right now a volunteer takes somebody they take an individual it's a four hour period of time for them to go back and forth and get all the information that's assuming they have any of their documents with them DHEC being able there to get somebody's birth certificate any of the health information that they need so that they can get those wrap around services and we can help people transition and lastly it's a place where we could bring people instead of putting them in jail because putting somebody in jail is not solving that problem because in 21 days they're back out and the cycle starts again and I don't think that's who we are as a community but the reality is we're at a tipping point we don't want to lose our compassion as a community so we're making those investments we're investing our money into housing we're investing our money into working with groups if it's the Courage Center or others who help people with addictions and how they they get through that process and how their family can come and join and they can build back that relationship that they may have lost over drugs or alcohol working to make sure that the people that are enabling them bad actors are not there anymore enabling these folks and keeping them from getting to their their goal of having an opportunity to live back in a home in a job, being part of a community that they cared about working on collaborative services where we're working together on how we provide meals and working with folks to make sure that we're actually getting things to the people who need it in a safe environment where there are bathrooms where there's a kitchen where there's a dining room there's air conditioning out of the elements so that we're working together and there's guidelines so that folks know exactly what they need to do to help folks but at the same time not cause problems for our residents and our businesses at the same time we have to have that balance it can't be one or the other it's got to be both and taking those small steps to get there testing and cleaning up we've done a lot of changing of the way our landscape looks so that it takes opportunities for people to hide or sit around and do the things that they shouldn't be doing away and makes it a cleaner appearance as we come into our community obviously we're going to continue to focus on the unsheltered citizens and do it together and we had the homeless task force and we're following through on a lot of those initiatives looking at where all the funding is going there are 103 providers that provide some type of service how do we get more collaboration for multiple reasons one we need to have accountability and milestones we need to make sure that all this money which is the tune of about 40 million dollars in our community is going into the homeless and our unsheltered actually is making a difference can we eradicate homeless and sit up here and say that no we can it's been around since time but we can make a difference we can reduce it we can restore the quality of life not only for the unsheltered but for our residents and businesses and that's us working collectively talk about peace of the puzzle everybody's a part of that puzzle the buses want to add something yeah so we had many of our task force meetings right here in this community center and one of the things that we learned was that there was a need for our providers and as the mayor mentioned there are numerous providers to do outreach after 5pm many of the providers are working 9 to 5 and as we know homelessness is a 24 hour situation and it's something that doesn't just go away because you know a non-profit is closed for the day one of the things that the city then did is they hired an outreach person and this person is out there hoping to get people engaged with the services that we have at Rapid Shelter and that's just one piece of a larger I think effort that the mayor has described in terms of the different ways in which we're attempting to address the situation I want to reiterate that the city can't solve homelessness on its own but it can certainly do its part and we have really put our focus on the chronically unsheltered homeless that unfortunately some of our citizens come across in negative interactions in our entertainment districts as well as other parts of the city including different neighborhoods and districts too and so we're continuing to be open and trying new things Rapid Shelter only opened November last year and we've already had some success with that but we've also had some resistance there are some folks that aren't ready to go into services how can we build that trust in order to get them the support and the help that they need and so we ask you all to spread the word about the resources that are available you know understand the different opportunities that there are to collaborate and hold our different organizations and providers accountable and how you can get involved in voicing your concerns about the ways we can make things better Do you want to add something? Sure Sometime ago when this conversation engendered itself there was a lot of conversation in council about our homeless population What can we do? Can we do anything? One of the things that I think is and ought to be said is that this city is a very passionate compassionate city What we did around this table is something I think was monumental nobody else nobody else did this but the city saw fit and it was a needful kind of insertion to help our brothers and sisters who find themselves in an uncheltered environment We built this place and some said oh it's not going to work it's not going to work folk aren't going to those pallets are just going to be there I wanted to and I need to say this I wanted to experience this myself as a mayor and another council person and I know one day does not rain a significant bill for anybody but on a cold wintry night three of us slept where our brothers and sisters are sleeping now some will say well that was just an act of publicity when many cameras there we slept in our clothes cold oh yes real cold with multiple layers of clothing just to sense and to feel what it's like to be homeless for a day now we were homeless for a day just think of the brothers and sisters who are homeless 24-7 and some who perhaps die behind buildings or in alleyways because they did not seek shelter in our inclement weather center or for the pallet community the pallet community has been great for us now that's not going to solve homelessness but it gives us that triaging effect in that we find out because we have workers there to find out what the real issues are 28 persons have graduated from this center in one year's time I think now it was not because the mayor and I slept there but it was because we knew that there was a need for us to be compassionate and passionate at the same time the rapid shelter center continues to function and to grow and to bloom and blossom and is blooming and blossoming blossoming because we've got folk out of that pallet community into permanent housing and that's throughout the city so as a member of the task force Dr. Bussells and I and Will Brennan we wrestle with all of the questions we wrestled with what's next for us and of course those meetings that we sponsored and had was very necessary for us to get a real shot at making this city one of our cities that talks about and not only talk about but to do homelessness in a way where lives are changed Thank you Matt So transitioning into the Vista Greenways and tying our greenways and our connectivity together which is so important as we've been working on the river for a long time but also connecting the greenways so our entire downtown can be connected focusing and highlighting and utilizing expanding the access to the river for everyone as we mentioned earlier we did a deal with Dominion to get a 100 year lease on 200 acres to open it back up working with stakeholders on William Street Extension to open up part of that river downtown not only for development so we can see the growth and the tax dollars but for a future park there that connects it all together working with our state collaboration again that greenway so we can make that connectivity but also partnering with families the Boyd Foundation who has spent in the last three years over 7 million dollars a year in our community to enhance it things from the garden center that they built down at the Hampton Preston to the bridges that they've committed to not only Boyd Island they've committed to two more bridges they're continuing to be part of that community investing they redid the aquarium at the zoo our number one attraction in the state they funded that because they care about our community so they continue to invest in things that enhance our community one day you will be able to get on a bike or walk from downtown Columbia all the way to the dam and back stop at the zoo if you care come back across the bridge the railroad into Elmwood Park make your way down over to maybe one of the coffee shops in the North Main District and then loop around the old trail and end up at the hospital because you walk so much your feet are tired but having the ability for people to take advantage of the connectivity without ever having to get in the car is what people are looking for today and we've got some of the best assets there's not a lot of communities that have three rivers coming to it the Salute of the Broad and the Congaree but partnering with the different folks together to make that connectivity the Mungo Foundation and the Irmo Chapin Recreation League making that commitment to bring that in as I-20 and I-26 as we know Malfunction Junction and now it's new name the Carolina Crossroads comes together that connectivity will be right through there so you'll be able to walk under it and keep on going maybe your mountain biking and seeing all our otters our beavers out there the red-tailed hawks and the blue heron but if you've ever walked on the riverfront there's not a lot of places in the southeast where you have Class II rapids accessibility and Spanish moss hanging people come from all over to see that so expanding those trails so all citizens can enjoy that from every part is important obviously none of this all happens without our department and Henry Simons is here and Randy Davis our parks director thank you guys for what you do appreciate it obviously public works department I mean Robert Anderson and his team thank you very much for what y'all do I don't see anybody here from their team but constantly working to improve our city and working with us when we miss a trash pick up Robert knows and fixes that immediately when somebody calls and they need something he does it and it's so exciting to see him do that but and within public works we have animal services now we've gotten a hundred thousand dollar best friends grant to continue efforts towards a no kill shelter but y'all to be honest with you we've got to build a new shelter it's outdated it has been in a place at the time that it was a great solution but with today's problems that we're seeing in the animal service the need for retail space for people there are more people who are helping out through fostering but we got to make sure that it's open and easy accessible for the public so building a new shelter with a steady art so we can make sure we're taking care of those animals giving them a chance and look our goal is to be no kill but unfortunately there are times that we have to but we're going to do everything we can to improve that services obviously we talk a lot about heat and environment our forestry department 500 trees in the city right of ways continuing to work with different departments and partnerships to add more that why is that important because we got an 18 degree differential which means the reflection of our ground and our buildings is heating up our city much more more trees more reflective services how we build roads in the future how we build sidewalks and I know somebody is going to say well Dominion keeps cutting the trees that is a true statement but one of the things that we're doing with Dominion and one of our partnerships with them is looking at using spruce and maple trees like they do in other cities and they build a grade across the top of it so the tree grows up and out so you get the canopy without getting into power lines and I know some folks go hey y'all need to go ahead and put every power line underground there's an advantage and disadvantage of that the disadvantage takes a lot longer when the power goes out to repair that than it is to string a new line so we got to forge that balance but what we want to do is not sacrifice the trees and really make sure that we invest in our forestry not only for our our health but to lower the heat which then lowers the cost of heating and cooling your home the other thing I think I'm very proud of to say that we are is a city we've done is we got gold status in lead cities with the only city in South Carolina that received gold status that means that what we've heard from our citizen committees what our staff is doing what we're doing as a city as a whole is getting us further up the ladder for the thing why is that important that means that we're doing things that are energy efficient we're doing things to work to save the climate we're pushing towards cleaner energy making sure that we're addressing stormwater protecting our natural resources water is a major natural resource and our river is the key to that and in 2015 we felt a little bit of that when we lost part of the canal now we have an alternative water source that we're putting in so that we can protect our system and our citizens for the future but being the only gold city in South Carolina is a testimony to our commitment and that's coming from the ground up that's our employees and our citizen driven CPAC which is our climate protection action council putting things forth for us that we go out and work as a city but also encourage our business partners to work with us obviously you know rail modernization we've been talking about it since 1905 in our community and obviously we've secured 40 million dollars towards relocating rail and why is that important because we're going to have an opportunity to close in a city of 60 plus rail crossings we're going to be able to close 15 crossings we're going to be able to take assembly street Rosewood and UG and be able to access that without being stopped why is that important for our community I'm going to tell you why because our growing industry in our state especially with the inlet port in the upstate and our port in Charleston is driving more train traffic than we ever seen the prediction is by the end of next year will be up 47% in train traffic that's great for the state economy it's not great for us because we're not getting any of that but we will when scout and it's phase two get online we'll be getting some of that revenue back in our community but until then we've got to change it so so opening up those areas for investment opening up communities have been blocked by the train that have ambulances can't get there police can't get their fire building a new fire station over there and lifting those up but that's just part of it part of that rail modernization is the quiet zones and those quiet zones will give us the opportunity to upgrade the safety on all our crossings in three phases across our city why is that important who in here would like the train to quit honking the horn when they drive through your neighborhood at night a lot of people by enhancing that with these with the quiet zone grant that eliminates that when they come through our community it enhances the crossing so that we don't have somebody accidentally being in front of a train walking through that's enhance cross lighting everything and y'all know then the crossings that we have that are not let well and not protected well and now we have an opportunity and I will tell you our congressional district reps Congressman Clyburn and others have been helping us with this and making calls so Senator Graham and Congressman Clyburn together calling the department of transportation and talking about how important it is okay both sides of the aisle working together for the betterment of our community that's what it's all about talk about being a piece of the puzzle that's a piece of the puzzle obviously we have continued to have an extensive footprint with that rail as we talked about we got to keep driving that is important we laugh about it but literally there was a book written about Columbia South Carolina in the modernization in 1905 and that's what it talked about the same thing we're talking about today so getting this done and improving our community is important obviously investing in our parks and recreation centers over the past year is so important breaking a ground Findlay Park groundbreaking on our crown jewel building it bringing it back to life and what's so exciting about that project is is that we have increased living downtown we have more tourists it is an economic engine but the conceptual drawing in everything was born within our own department in our own parks and wrecks department Todd Martin this was this was he brought us the best plan I've seen in 15 years being around this city was done right in our door so not only is that a testimony to our community but it's a testimony to our staff feeling that they can share their ideas and show us this park will be something that everybody will be excited about and want to be part of in our mainstay downtown having park rangers there having maintenance crews there why are our other parks thrive much better because they're people there and that's what's been missing in Finlay Park we didn't we didn't plan for the maintenance that end up taking now we got a plan we got enhanced water features but you're going to have rangers there you have outdoor exercising you have maintenance crews there much like we do in other parks and that's going to be the difference why it will stay our crown jewel obviously high at park our CDBG project almost $350,000 in the baseball renovation happening there our outdoor renovation and condonation from Asia Wilson Asia Wilson is giving back to our community and by the way if anybody saw her play the other night she had the highest scoring in a playoff game ever and you know what she always talks about Columbia, South Carolina it's exciting but what's great about it is I had an opportunity to talk about this basketball and what Asia did and we got a letter from Nancy Lieberman who was the first one of the first coaches in the women's NBA but also one of the first women coaches in the NBA and she has a foundation guess what she wants to do she wants to come bring us one in another neighborhood she wants to invest because she saw the kids on our court and she saw what Asia did for her community she said my foundation is set up to do that I want to do it here and that's the kind of recognition that we're getting as a community because you know what we're doing we're telling our story we got something to tell and we're telling it we have applied for grants and federal funding at every level part of the grants that we're applying for again an outdoor exercise facility in every district why is that important because we need to be outside we're in a place where you can be outside 10 months out of the year and enjoy it and if we can enhance the neighborhood and take care of our healthy community which we'll be talking to you all the all about the blue zones as we get to start that study because we want to be known as a blue zone which is a healthy city with long life people living up to 100 we've invested $100,000 and installing computers into our parks for public use making sure people have access to it investing Wi-Fi in our recreation centers over 500 youth with our under armor program 1400 youth in the city summer camps hosting 75 different kids on average in five of our different parks senior programs averaging 400 seniors per month and I can tell you we got some of the most active seniors and I hope that y'all help us get there and we're giving you the smuckers award for being at 100 when you get there because that's our goal is to make sure we're all healthy but bingo aerobics special events trips did you want to add anything to that yeah one of the interesting things is it relates to parks and recs of course we've invested a lot of energy time and money in our parks in district 2 and I think I reported to Miss Clark today that we've received we've we've done all park work in district 2 all of our parks have been redone and of course our next project is the ML team project there is equipment that we've already looked at that process that meeting process is over with and we're going to be meeting with the community October 10 at 6 o'clock where you will be shown both sides in terms of two concepts in terms of how ML King Park will fashion itself our parks of course represent a critical something very critical in the life of our city when bull street was open and we were able to introduce ourselves to the park there it became a necessary activity for folk to come to that park and to enjoy themselves on the walking trail and several other things what we want to do with our parks is to continue that kind of process and I want to thank Henry Simon and Randy Randy Davis are they here are they here where is Randy okay hey Randy I want to thank you I want to thank you both of you all for your insight in your creativity and again allowing us to do what we need to do in reference to our parks thank you sir now focusing on revitalizing neighborhoods love your block grants we brought back community promotions 130 units 20 homes repaired through the community development block grant continuing to work in Washington to work with HUD and others to make sure that we're getting every opportunity to help and weatherization is we had our shine program and others to really help rebuild back some of our neighborhoods and make it that but that's not only there but partnering with Columbia Housing Authority to go after our choice neighborhood grants and we thought we could cut the corner and not have to do the planning grant because we all work together on a plan called East Central everybody remember East Central East Central is valid today well we took that off the shell and we brought that forth and that's going to be the plan that we submit through a planning grant and our goal is to go after a 35 million dollar grant a choice neighborhood grant focused on 29203 why is that relevant that 35 million can get us 50 million dollars in private investment through working with institutional lenders to leverage so that we can focus on housing that we can focus on community retail and restaurants and build back these pockets that we've talked about attracting folks here taking advantage of leveraging that funding with other infrastructure funding to improve all of 29203 parts of 29204 and 29205 which were all in the East Central plan that so many people work with I know Miss Watson remember she was on that committee I mean that was a revolutionary plan at the time we didn't have the funding and now there's funding sources where we can go after and start building that one step at a time the houses over in Belmont that are being built are part of that program the houses in Booker Washington that are going to be built a part of that the lots that we have now Mark Luther King those are part of that we start working on that piece by piece and get home ownership back into our communities and grow them obviously you know as we continue to address food insecurity we just launched two weeks ago where we funded the the cart our trailer working with Tom's farm to bring fresh fruit meats and other products into the community but in October we're going to announce a program that started off with $10,000 for us to kind of get a pilot program which is morphed into a bigger program we're going to do a program with Instacart in our community to help bring groceries delivery at no charge for the service to folks that are in areas of food insecurity folks that are on fixed incomes folks that have on SNAP program and what's really exciting about it is that Instacart sees this as a national model that they may want to roll out and guess where it's going to start right here in Columbia, South Carolina Columbia, South Carolina once again Columbia, South Carolina and exciting about that because it's taking a system that's already in play and using it to to solve a problem investing in our neighborhoods and community empowering city workforce as you know this year in this budget here we have have market salary adjustments for all non sworn city employees, step programs for the police department and fire leadership development and training when we're talking about investing in the city, investing in our employees is one of the most important things and investing in their development into their well-being into programs that they can use to develop their skills and provide the service for you in the best light and being part of that taking technology and investing in it so we can communicate better Dr. Bussells talked about it earlier but making it so that we can communicate and any employee can tell you what's going on with your work order that's where we're headed with some new technology and utilizing people that are out there that really can help us answer those questions to solve our problems consolidating our city offices putting focus on city-owned properties back in we're looking to sell over 17 properties and put them back on the tax roll bringing our employees together so they're working in unison and more spaces where they have the ability to collaborate and work together we're so excited about this opportunity and then obviously the third piece for us in the overall city is economic development that means development in every corner that means selling our city we had over $560 million in development in Columbia in the last fiscal year $160 million in single family two family and town homes almost $70 million in multi almost $300 million in commercial developments $200 million in other developments hospitality districts growing five new hotels five multi-family developments in three different districts people are choosing we're going with our folks to other towns we've been to Charleston Greenville Charlotte Atlanta we've got groups coming from Alabama and Nashville why because we're reaching out to them and getting them to know our community and when they realize they're like well I should have gone there before I went to Greenville I should have gone there before because what they realize is this community supports small businesses 92 to 93% of all the businesses here are owned by folks here they're small businesses in our community responds to that that's why I stayed here 35 years ago when I had a choice to leave and I saw my friends staying here taking jobs I saw friends starting businesses and I said you know what I'm gonna stay and I'm gonna start a business and and I'm very happy that I did I don't regret one minute but we want people to do the same thing today so we're actively showing every corner we're taking advantage of every tax incentive abandoned building tax you name it whatever we can do to help bring those businesses create jobs create each each quarter grow taking these these places where we've seen no growth in a while and emphasizing how our gateways in our communities are telling our story but we only can do part of it we got to continue to work together so when you talk about beautification and cleanups we got to do the things to make sure that people see each one of our neighborhoods our corridors our streets our gateways is the beautiful place it should be I don't know what happened during the pandemic but we forgot about what beautification looks like people throwing trash down everywhere dumping in our neighborhoods yes and we're being we're working on that too through innovative ways with trail cameras asking our legislators to step up and allow us to increase the fines so that when we catch these people that fine is painful it's really exciting and just just in this past year and we're only in nine months over 900 new business licenses applied for not renewals new new businesses home base other businesses our communities growing they realize what we have here we renewed over 7000 business licenses continuing to share and encourage people to invest in our community but because we have such a great economic development office and we have an incredible office of business opportunity I don't know Miss Ayesha is here Ayesha triggers our director she's doing an incredible job not only making sure that businesses have the resources but she's making sure that we're achieving the goals that we committed to and making sure we're investing in small localize and disadvantage of women businesses and we just went through a disparity study and I will be glad to tell y'all we exceeded our goal we exceeded our goal because we got the right people in the right places doing the right thing to improve our community and I think that's very important we also have supported 50 plus openings ribbon cuttings which when people want to have a ribbon cutting they want you to know that their business is open they want to be part of the community and when you see a crowd of people around a small business it's pretty exciting now granted didn't help my waistline because a lot of these have been bakeries and restaurants and I'm supposed to be on a locale diet but how do you pass up a good homemade seminar or pound cake or a steam bagel sandwich which I didn't believe it would be good but I'm going to tell you it's very very good but workshops and events for over 5,000 local businesses the 10th annual small business conference week 212 business owners participated 350,000 350,000 awarded 12 businesses through the commercial retention and redevelopment plan and that's just a snapshot of the things that are going on this is what gets exciting Ed or Audity you want to add anything to that? It's interesting to note a lot of the businesses that we cut ribbons on were businesses that were their cuisine was excellent between April April 22, 2022 and April 2023 I think there was an issuance of somewhere between 6,000 to 7,000 business licenses which I think becomes an economic driver for our city and those numbers continue to grow every year so we find ourselves in a situation where there are not only good businesses and I got to say it good food and of course most of the businesses that we cut ribbons we've had an opportunity to dine and that's good and it's bad it's good that the cuisine is excellent but it's bad that every business we open we put on a few more pounds so it becomes an economic driver now I do not have the figures and of course that's Ryan right over there our economic stand up Ryan let him see you sir he kept us tremendously with that process and we are grateful for that leadership sir and continue to do what you do and we'll continue to do what we do and this time next year we will have 12,000 business licenses thank you ma'am one of the things that was really important to the mayor and all of us that were new to council was making it easy to start a business here in Columbia so this may seem small but it made such a difference for business owners when we moved the licensing process online to be able to renew to create you know to be able to get your license and so really improving those technologies to make it easier and then we also hired a business liaison which is really focused on helping you navigate the process of when you want to open a business because for many first time entrepreneurs this is brand new territory and it's okay to not know you know go through and get the permits and figure out if you're doing the right things in terms of de-hack and the city and so we're doing these things to again make it easy because when we have someone establish their roots here that's bettering our community it's providing food for a family and bringing food to the table it's building income and it's just bringing back a lot of good things to Columbia that we like to see continue so now District 2 updates are a little around in the public service talk about some of the major water product Clint Clint Shealy is here ahead of our water and wastewater and public works, Clint stand up so everybody can see you thanks Clint for all your continued work with us so obviously the Harden Street pump station improvement Rocky Branch based in the 13 million low impact development in the Benedict buyer retention sales 7 million dollars beautification projects obviously in the forestry division from the Vista and East Gervais street obviously our pathway units that are in there involved that's so important as we have a full time metro pathways unit and that's the person we're talking about who's working with folks in high crisis areas so we got a crisis and action team working together obviously the police department continuing to work on partnerships and the night life and identifying everything from underage drinking to over serving but also protecting our businesses at night and focus to make sure that your property is protected and your neighborhoods are safe obviously neighborhoods and community we continue to invest in we talked a little bit about the Finley Park new public restrooms at all star baseball field that were installed this year obviously the new resource center that we put in the library that flooded where we have an opportunity for incubator in our neighborhood and it was something that we saw an opportunity where we could give a place for people to go and use so you have opportunity to have your space to work in and we're paying for the power of the Wi-Fi the copiers the scanners everything in there so that you can jump jump start your small business right there in the neighborhood we've collected about four million dollars towards our gymnasium and community center over on the property that we own which is up near the all star baseball we hope to start cutting down the trees and getting that levelized and started building the base for the gymnasium hopefully in the next year obviously phase three of TS Martin new fencing walking paths sunshades $400,000 investment in there funding improvement projects underway for the new playground Martin Luther King partner Reverend McDowell talked about approved funding a project for the riverfront and projects down there restrooms lighting so forth proven on the Beltline community project the new gymnasium we talked about that the playground there but also green space so that we can open up that area that's been sitting behind that rail and really bring the neighborhood together to have a place and opportunity especially for our young folks in that neighborhood and and this is something that's been asked for for a long time and you got to give some our credit to our our representative Todd Rutherford has been tirelessly making sure that we get some of this surplus funding at the state to make sure that this happens sooner than later proving the project around the Greenway expansion at Columbia and Elwood the Belvedere Hap program to see your cure of funds for the real rehabilitation of homes this is going on right now as we speak and then obviously new home construction which we talked about several times before is to think it's important that we're taking assets that the city had and doing something with them to improve the community and housing is one of those commitments that we have obviously that the new affordable housing units for the home ownership we talked about several times but I can't say it enough because it's so important obviously our our pedals initiative donation of 50 bikes and helmets that we've done now in district one and district two with the help of a corporate sponsors Walmart and our police department and I tell you there's nothing better to see these kids who work their little tails off at school to be at the top of their class to get that free bike and be able to drive off the street it's pretty incredible and I want to thank the school district and Walmart who are our big supporters in that program and y'all the teachers and the principals came out and you would have thought they were getting the bikes because they were so excited for those kids and it really was something that you'll always remember and it obviously economic development we're seeing restaurants downtown you know the beer killer in district to put a million dollar investment new jobs Boku a restaurant taco sushi we're seeing more restaurants and more retail coming we got more people looking at our corridors and investing in them and I think that's exciting because people understand the quality of our historic neighborhoods and the quality of our neighborhoods downtown is who their customer base is and they're coming to us our receivable solutions is coming with a two million investment 300 new jobs Bull Street on the corner of Bull and Elm that whole block that had been empty for a long time that gas station is going away those empty buildings are going away it's 48 million dollars 335,000 square feet of new restaurant retail space this the depot project announced 180 million dollars 70 jobs 170 jobs maxi hotel the maxi hotel coming downtown we talked about that UG flats another 116 then there's another project just getting announced to be 220 million dollars downtown the group that's on Elmwood is trying to buy more properties and put more attainable housing projects there so that we have workforce housing we have market rate housing and we have affordable housing all in our center core so people can take advantages of what's downtown why is that important it's closer to getting dealing with the housing that we need to solve but also the more density get the more opportunities we have to get grocery stores and retail and that is important because it takes density to get those so that's the snapshot of our districts as we continue to invest in our parks continue to invest in the infrastructure continue to invest in our housing in our businesses but we're not going to stop there we're going to continue to work with each and everyone to understand where else the needs is you know we're working on the homelessness and investing in it from the rapid shelter to our clinicians hopefully our one stop shop and our one stop shop is not being dropped in somebody's neighborhood this will hopefully be in a site where they're already they're already services there just to enhance what we need to make sure that the unsheltered and others get the help they need we did get some questions submitted but before we do that there is question forms there please grab them add questions if you look under your seat there's a piece of puzzle I like y'all to grab it you're part of the piece of the puzzle so I hope y'all will look at it and say I want to be the side that's got life on it and I want to be part of what makes Columbia the number one city and realize that we can't move forward if each one of us are not part of that puzzle so when you go home think about how am I going to be that part of the puzzle so we we got a question from Miss T from District 2 she said when are the neighborhood revitalizations to take place in Booker Washington Heights so we are currently working through the contracts and our optimistic excuse me I've been talking so long I can't even talk construction will begin in the fiscal year with six new homes intended for home ownership and that's plugging into the city now for folks to understand what we're doing with a lot of these lots the city is donating the lots and the improvements so that that counts towards a person's down payment so they're building equity from day one and these homes are 170,000 less so that you're paying less than you would with rent even with taxes and insurance so our goal is to get people into home ownership that want to have that opportunity in every corner of our city Miss M from District 2 said the lighted intersection of Hardin and Hampton going east to west only stays green for a few minutes thank you for telling me Robert Anderson and our team at Public Works are checking into that but she also asked about programs like Love Our Block grants and some of the community promotions and things to enhance we're going to continue to do those programs so people can get grants even if it's small things like planting flowers at your entrance ways enhancing your neighborhood signage I will tell you that we did go after we went to the state and asked them for funding for our roads so you know 72% all the roads in Columbia which is 492 miles worth are owned by the state we didn't get any funding for it but we're continuing to fight for that funding and down the road the penny sales tax will go away in a couple years and there will be a question will you renew that and I think we do renew it but I think we renew it this way that a third of it goes to our bus system to ensure we have a transit system to get those folks to where they need to go in our community a third of it go to the city of Columbia and a third of it go to the county strictly for sidewalks and road improvement folks if we had that type of funding today we could redo every road in Columbia within 12 years every road no more long waits sidewalks being built connectivity being finished and our roads being in the best shape we can we're going to continue to fight for that but this is coming down the pipe and we ought to think about that what's the best solution if we could do all these projects in that short time imagine what we could do if we had a steady income each year and we could contract to get everybody's road in Columbia repair this jean I heard a rumor the city was considering forming a pedestrian plaza on main street near the capital no plaza but what we're looking at is an all-cross walk so if you remember on main street years ago they actually shut down the entire intersection so no traffic either way so people could safely cross the road we're looking at bringing that back especially in places where we have high traffic and wide roads like assembly north main I hope with the end of the day we're going to be able to do the trial with the state to narrow that road so that we can connect the neighborhoods together and make it easier for people to get across but assembly street and other places where we can just shut down the intersection and get people across safely so the neighborhoods can connect that's what we're working on I found that DOT is more today excited about working with alternatives and I have to thank Denver shared with us their slow plan so now we're finally getting to try asphalt art and other things to slow down traffic hopefully by the end of this year we'll be beginning our slow neighborhoods which means lowering the speed limit in our neighborhoods using art and bump outs and other things to slow down traffic in our neighborhoods I know that that is a big concern for folks and speedhumps serve a purpose but there's some alternatives that we can do to do other things to calm down traffic in our neighborhoods especially as we continue to rebuild them and then Miss Rhonda C asked thanks for your energy and your hard work improving the lives of those and live and work in Columbia we're working on service on a one stop shop how is this plan consolidate service for the unhound in one area coming along well the Hope Center which is what we want to call it we're working now to hopefully secure a site which then we can bring all the partners together and bring that but in the meantime we've been meeting with folks in other communities that have had great success and that great success is understanding what those needs are how many clinicians we need we talked about the urgent care the physical therapy the classes but the Laredac service having psychiatric being able for people to have individual housing and the individual housing so a room in a center like this where you have towers and the base services now at the bottom each one of those rooms has to be done differently because somebody who has mental health challenges may not be able to have a window that can open they may need different colors to calm them down so talking to Gainesville where they took an old jail and converted it into similar to other cities that are doing the same thing and learning from what they've learned from this didn't work or this work or you should invest in this and less in this then sitting down with our partners so we met with most of the healthcare providers we met with some of the mental health clinicians about what they see what would facilities look like some being group therapy some being individual what else do we need to make sure that we're getting those services to folks so we're doing our homework we're not going into this blind but we're also smart enough to know that we need to bring the right partnership to the table to be part of it so we'll continue to do that and then George Kay from said he's concerned about pedestrian and cycle safety in the city center wants to know what we're dressing lights intersection cross signals pedestrian crossing vehicle speeds obviously Calhoun street projects adding bike lanes to Calhoun looking at potentials of bike lanes wherever there's new projects so that we can partner with that but also looking at the bump outs how do we narrow roads down when we bring investors here one of the things they talk about is how do you connect the community better they ask me why does Marion street have four lanes why do you have these great historic neighborhoods tied on Main Street from from here to I-20 and you have four lanes of traffic going how about narrowing those down in places so people can take advantage of the retail and the amenities the city has to offer these neighborhoods so we're looking at that and working with the planning folks at SCDOT and others in the Boyd Foundation and every grant that's out there about reducing the flow of traffic so it's safer for everyone to enjoy connectivity because we're going to link up all these greenways but we're still going to have a speedway it's not going to work so doing it all collectively together as part of it and then obviously we're looking to reduce as we talk about the neighborhood slow zones that we've been working on to reduce the speed limit and also look at what else can we do to slow that traffic down and I hope some of it can be art and beautification that does that as well to enhance the neighborhood at the same time with that I just one I'd like to thank my colleagues for being here I'd like to thank my city staff for being here and being part of it but most of all I'd like y'all to thank y'all for coming you know this originally was supposed to be an hour but there's so much information you can't do it in an hour so I thank y'all for being here but I do challenge you when you leave today think about how am I part of that puzzle and we talk about open for business open for innovation open for ideas open for criticisms look if you don't tell us we can't fix it and we don't have the solution all the time but we're going to figure out a way to do it so we're going to try different things and sometimes we're going to fail and other times we're going to succeed but just know we're going to learn something from it but we need your input your support and we need you to be part of the puzzle thank y'all for being here