 Hello everybody, hi how are y'all today? My name is Keeman Rowe and I'm the Steer to Fort Worth Director and I just want to thank you all for coming out today, it's such a great energy in the room I see a lot of new faces to join Steer Fort Worth and to make a difference in our community. But that's what today is all about, claiming our seat at the table and addressing issues that we're all passionate about. I'd like to thank a couple of our sponsors, Sundara Center staff, Chesapeake Energy, Sid Richardson and Amon Carter Foundations, they have all underwritten the entire year for Steer Fort Worth so let's just give them a round of applause. I'd also like to thank McAllister's and Soda Springs as well as the Mayor and Council staff and all the countless volunteers that have made today possible. They couldn't have been possible without them as well as the vision of Mayor Betsy Price. She could not be here today but she sends her well wishes and you'll actually hear a video message from her a little later. I'd also like to thank our lovely speakers, Senator Davis and Councilmember Joel Burns. Momentarily you'll hear from the two of them, they have such a passion for Fort Worth and you'll see it when you hear them speak. So let's give them a round of applause as well please. On your tables there's a as a centerpiece there's an unfinished house but it needs items such as a lawn, a sidewalk, a fence, a lorm system, water, gas, electricity and so on. It requires maintenance and upkeep. In fact these homes collectively represent our neighborhoods in our city. The same concept I just used can be taken to a broader scale to talk about the city of Fort Worth. A city also needs sidewalks, streets, art, parks, water, public safety and all the other essentials. All of this defines the character and personality of our city. What they look like and what they become is all up to you. What do you want Fort Worth to be? What do you want it to look like in the next 10 to 15 years? That's what today is all about us claiming our seat at the table. What things do you love most about Fort Worth today that you want to see in the future? The welcome mat on the house says it's your Fort Worth, home is where Fort Worth is. Well Fort Worth is our home and the house on your table is unfinished. It's up to you all to determine what the end product will be. So picture yourself like you're on HGTV, Home Makeover, Extreme Home Makeover Edition. You're all going to be doing some serious lifting, rolling up your sleeves and getting to work today. Fort Worth is a wonderful place but we also have a long way to go towards building the city that we want to become. Folks like Mayor Price, Council Member Burns and Senator Davis have already laid the foundation for this house that we're going to inherit. It all starts with that house. Well folks, this is our time to make a difference. Today, this time right now, Mayor Price, the City Council and folks like Senator Davis are giving us a chance to have our seat at the table. And as any of you know me, I always say if you're not at the table then you're on the menu. All right, well in closing, I would like to welcome Council Member Joel Burns to speak to you. Mayor Price always says when it comes to Steer Fort Worth that she's one proud mama. So I technically like to think of Joel as our cool older brother. Thank you Kim and I appreciate that. You know when we start these presentations, they all always want you to start out with a joke and I was at my doctor's office just before this, having my annual physical and it occurred to me that my annual physicals are different than those of you under 40 who are men. And I really couldn't work that joke in very well so I'm just going to let it go. So yeah, it's great to be over 40. I really actually shouldn't have started out that way. It is great to be here. I want to, before I get too further in the whole I'm digging, I want to acknowledge a few folks who are here. Obviously Senator Wendy Davis, a longtime friend of I think all of us is here and I appreciate her taking time out of her schedule. I had the privilege of getting to see her on Tuesday be sworn into the Texas Senate yet again for another term and we're very happy to have Wendy in Austin representing us and we're also happy to have her leadership and you'll get to hear from her in just a little bit. We also have Charles Boswell who is our former city manager who is Wendy's chief of staff and also speaking of chief of staff, we also have Jason Lamers who's the mayor's chief of staff who's with us today and hopefully I didn't miss anyone else but we appreciate these folks being here with us today and Keem and I appreciate the introduction. Thank you very much. So I got to talk to you, I'd say a good chunk of you. I see a number of familiar faces from when we did the kickoff of this organization a year ago at JT Garcia's. How many people were there? Actually not very many. I'm glad to see that we've picked up steam and added a bunch of new faces along the way. That's a good thing. It's a good thing to grow. When I first got appointed to my very first board and commission, my council member at the time, Ralph McLeod, appointed me to the landmark commission. I remember attending my first meeting and thinking I'm 30 years younger than anyone else on this board. That's messed up. Wendy is well aware as are all the council members that we want to have our boards and commissions and the entities and organizations that lead our city be truly representative of our city. All too often though, the pool of applicants for our board and commission filings are old white guys and they are often times the folks who have the time, they have the money, they might be retired and they have the ability to go vote, to go get involved in an organization, to show up on a monthly basis to a board and commission meeting. Those of you in this room have new businesses or new jobs. You have families. You've got young folks. My husband and I were truly blessed. We had the opportunity for one year to have two foreign exchange kids up until this past summer and going from zero to two 16-year-olds who don't speak English very well is a real eye-opening experience. When I was at a neighborhood meeting this past summer and someone said, where have you been for the last year? Are you hanging out with Ellen or something? I said, no, I've actually had two 16-year-olds and your neighborhood meeting falls on my German kid's Boy Scout night and on my French kid's rugby night. That was my priority for the year. I totally get that. It's hard to be engaged and be active in what's going on in your city when you have really personal things drawing at your attention and drawing for your, and vying for your time. When I, since there's very few of you overall who were at JT Garcia's a year ago, I'll tell you a little bit about how I got involved. And a huge chunk of it is just dumb luck and otherwise perseverance and an inability to say no. My husband and I bought our first house in 1993. We were basically dumb kids who didn't know any better. We bought this awesome, beautiful, architectural, historic landmark in East Fort Worth in Meadowbrook. On the day we closed, we got the keys in our hands. We're like 24 and 25 and we own a house and we're like, oh my gosh, no one realizes we're really too young and stupid to actually own a house. We had this huge $70,000 mortgage at the time. And yeah, and so we get the keys, we go to the title office, we do the closing, they hand us the keys, we go and we stand in our front yard for the first time as proud, happy homeowners. It's an awesome experience. We're looking at our pretty beautiful house that we need to move all of our stuff into which is mostly plastic furniture from college. And we hear a horn honk behind us and we both turn around and we look. And there's this car that pulled up in front of the house across the street from us, honks again, someone comes out of the house holding a little bag, walks to the car, hands the baggy inside the window, pulls money out of the car, walks back up to the front door, the car drives away. And now we know why our house was so cheap. We bought a house across the street from a crack house. We spent seven years getting that house shut down and it was not easy. We had the fourth police come do surveillance from our house. We're out like handing them cups of coffee in our flower bed at two in the morning. They made multiple arrests, but there was always some family member that then moved in and took over the business of selling the drugs. And so we walked door to door for about a four block radius of every household in our neighborhood and talked to each and every person. And we were stunned to learn that a huge chunk of them had never met their neighbors. And we asked them, and our house was actually the dividing line between, at the time, Becky Haskins and Ralph MacLeod's districts, and had both of them come, had the deputy police chief come, had a number of police officers and invited our entire neighborhood to our house. And they showed up and many of them, like I said, had never done anything more than maybe wave to the person across the street while dragging their trash bins out. I was stunned by that. Many of them had lived there for 20, 30, 40 years. And you had this odd combination of elderly white folks. You had a number of Vietnamese, Hispanic, and African American new families who had moved in. You had a few kind of gay urban pioneers who had moved in. And it was an odd diverse crowd. But we came up with a common purpose of shutting that house down. And through multiple arrests, we didn't achieve the results we wanted. And so we came up with the idea of shutting them down through assessing ongoing code violations. It was something that had never been done in the city of Fort Worth before. And every week, we came up with a committee. And every week, we called in a code violation every Monday morning. This place was kind of like a Sanford and Sun thing with a big junk pile in the back. And they weren't going to get rid of the junk pile. So they just had an assessment. Each and every week, they got an additional call for seven years until the fees that they owed the city of Fort Worth amounted to more than the value of the house. And the city of Fort Worth was able to foreclose on that house through our persistence. Today, there is grass in that front yard. And there is a young family that owns that house. I don't live in that neighborhood anymore. We moved from Meadowbrook to Ryan Place about 10 years ago. But I still drive past down that street not only to see our old house, our first house we ever had, but to check in on the house across from us. You have opportunities to make those kind of little victories that will change your street, change your neighborhood, change the families that live around you. I still have little old ladies who used to be afraid to talk to their Hispanic and African American across the street neighbors who still send us Christmas cards. We haven't lived there for 10 years, but still say thank you for getting our street and our neighborhood and our community together in a common purpose. As I mentioned, my getting to be where I could run for the city council is kind of a prolonged inability to say no. After we got involved in that project, I got involved in my neighborhood association. Ralph appointed me to the Landmark Commission. Within a year, I was chair of the Landmark Commission after we moved to Ryan Place. And I was no longer eligible to be on the Landmark Commission. Wendy appointed me to the Zoning Commission. And then one day, Wendy called and said, hey, I'm going to resign here in a couple of days and what are we doing for the next few years? And my first response to Wendy was, Wendy, I love you, but expletive, expletive, expletive, no. I actually like to make money. I want to retire someday. I like to be able to go to the grocery store without someone haranguing me about a pothole. I know, thank you, but no. But the truth was, I didn't realize it, but through the involvement in my street, getting the strikehouse shut down and serving on the Landmark Commission and serving on the Zoning Commission, I'd actually done the things necessary and put in the time and got to know the people and got to understand City Hall in a way that actually made me somewhat qualified to run for City Council. And so I did. And I'm here today. And as I mentioned at JT Garcia's last year, it's changed my life. It's changed my life in ways that I'm so the better for. I wouldn't have ever guessed that there would be much beyond filling those potholes and fixing sidewalks and dealing with people I rate because their garbage cans have gotten knocked over and all that kind of stuff in my service on City Council. We take a lot of those calls and I'm looking at some of the council aides back there who filled a lot more than we filled of those calls of people who are I rate about certain things because City Council is one of the most retail of politics. You're the most immediate there to people's needs and concerns. I've had the opportunity though to talk about things far beyond that that I wouldn't have guessed. Teenage bullying and suicide was not anything that I ever imagined I would have a discussion about. It wasn't on my job description. It wasn't on, you know, it wasn't up there with filling the potholes and fixing the sidewalks and making sure the garbage was picked up. But I had an opportunity to talk about it and I did and it changed my life. I made comments about a year or two years ago now, more than two years ago now and ended up doing those things like going on The Ellen Show, The Today Show, etc. But I also, because of being somewhat vulnerable, because of being honest in a way people aren't familiar with, used to or sometimes even comfortable with, it gave me the opportunity to have conversations with people in my own family. I'm 43 years old and I remember 41 at the time, the day after I made those comments, both my brother and sister called me and we had long, really heartfelt conversations. My brother is 15 years younger than me. My sister and I are both adopted from Gladney here in Fort Worth. When they first got married we're told they wouldn't be able to have kids at 40. My parents proved their doctors wrong and I had a brother who was 15 years younger than me. And Cody worked on a ranch south of Stephenville and a big ranching bubba guy he takes after my dad named Butch. And Cody calls me and we had this really long, awesome, heartfelt conversation where he cried and I cried and I hung up the phone and by that I was driving from some meeting or something and by that point I had gotten home and I turned to JD and I said, I'm 41 years old and I've never had a real conversation with my own brother. I mean he was in diapers when I moved off and went away to college so obviously we didn't grow up in the same household but I was 41 and never really had an adult conversation with him and we had that out of my doing something, serving on city council that people didn't really expect me to do. As I mentioned, he cried, I cried, you know, he told me that he was proud of me. I got to attend the president and first lady's first ever summit on bullying prevention a few months after that at the White House and on the day that I flew back from that my brother was killed in a car wreck, he was 27 years old and he, it was a, you know, no one was drunk driving, it was the middle of the day, daylight, his pickup was going over a gravel road and it fished out and he went into a ditch and it rolled the truck and he wasn't wearing a seat belt and it threw him out and the truck rolled over him and crushed him to death. I don't know that I would ever have had that conversation had I not had the opportunity to serve in the way that I have serving on the city council and to do the things beyond fixing the potholes and the sidewalks and the garbage that I've had the opportunity to do. It has been an amazing experience having this opportunity to serve and I will always be appreciative for the gifts that I've received from it that I never would have expected, gifts like having a conversation with my own brother about a serious topic that I'd never had before. There are a lot of opportunities out there. It's hard to know where they are and when they will come and how you can grab them, how you can seize those opportunities but the deal is that you just need to be doing, be active, be involved and people will notice that, people will see that. They'll ask you to serve on the landmark commission because they think you're a crazy old building hugger and you might be and you'll get the opportunity to do that and you'll get the opportunity for leadership. Pick things that you're interested in, pick things you're passionate about, do them, get involved and the opportunities will come. I want to thank you guys for your involvement in Steer Fort Worth, your well on your way. Keep doing it, keep bringing back the good recommendations. I'm excited about there's health and wellness, homelessness and education or the three new ones. Arts and arts, I'm sorry, are the three new ones. I have completely, completely strayed from pretty much everything I plan to say to you. Let me make sure I'm not missing anything major. So we're excited that you guys are coming up with these good ideas. Keep them coming. Oh, I have a reminder here. So Jason was saying he's not a big Twitter guy earlier but there are a lot of opportunities to connect in modern ways that people who are not 100 years old might embrace. The senator tweets, I tweet, the mayor tweets. The mayor's is Betsy underscore price. Mine is Joel Burns, just altogether one word. And the senator's is Wendy Davis, Texas spelled out, Wendy Davis TXAS. Be sure to follow us. It's okay, you can pull out your phones right now if you want to and you can add us. The city of Fort Worth has some great tools that are getting better. In terms of there are a variety of emails you can sign up. You can sign up for one specific to your district. You can sign up for ones like emergency notifications of storms coming, those type of things, trash pickup type things. Go to FortWorthTexas.gov and sign up for those so that you're aware. There really are some great tools. There's a thing called Nixie or Nixle that also gives you text messages when there's emergencies going on, all kinds of tools and resources. So check that out at FortWorthTexas.gov. Again, thank you for the opportunity. Not only to be here today, but thank you for the opportunity to serve. It is, like I said, been a life-changing experience. One that is far greater in its value than what we get paid to do this. And I'm very fortunate. Thank you again, and thank you for your involvement. Wendy is not only a friend, but she's a mentor. She appointed me to the zoning commission. We've been friends for a long time and really gave me the opportunity to grow in that position and to hone my qualifications when it came time to run in the seat to fill her vacancy. I didn't bring any of my stuff to talk about the committees you serve on or any of those things, but I'll give you one little vignette about Wendy's leadership. Wendy has an amazing ability to not just be a Democrat, to not just be a woman, to not just be someone from Fort Worth. She reaches across party lines. She works with Republicans and Democrats down in Austin in a way that is an example for all of us for reaching across ideological divides. And she stands up for things that she feels passionate about. I think most of the people in the room are familiar with the end, the closing of our legislative session last year where Wendy filibustered on the topic of education funding and we have seen the impact of those cuts to our education funding here in the state of Texas. Cuts that in my opinion and a lot of people in retrospect need to be remedied in the course of this legislative session. Wendy felt passionate about it enough to stand up and to make a statement. It's easy particularly when you're in the partisan minority of the legislature or you're in the minority of any decision making body to stand up when you know it's going to be a tough fight and the ultimate result might not be what you want. It's easy to say, well, we're not going to win this, so why make a big fuss? Wendy did and it changed the course of the conversation on our education funding and I was in Austin as I mentioned on Tuesday and people are still talking about Wendy's action. Not just on education but on rape testing, rape testing, other things like that. Wendy really cares about our community and is not afraid. Fear is a thing that really hampers all of us in any and everything we do. The day that I made my comments about teenage suicide and bullying, I really wasn't sure that I was going to say what I said until I opened my mouth and started because I was afraid. Wendy is very recognizing that that kind of fear is debilitating and she sets it aside every day and goes to work for all of us here in District 10, as well as all of us here in the state of Texas. I'm very proud and honored to call Wendy Davis my friend and I'm happy she served with us today. So did y'all see Joel when he got up on the stage a while ago? He, look at those legs. So he took one big step and got up here and it reminded me of a few years ago I was at a dinner in the mid cities that was honoring Speaker Jim Wright. And a couple of people had spoken at the microphone before Speaker Wright had and they had been doing that, just hopping up on the stage and avoiding the stairs that were on the other side of the stage. And Jim Wright, how old is Jim Wright? 89 is what she said, so he was in his mid 80s at this point. He decides when it's his turn to speak that he's going to arrive on the stage in exactly that same manner. And I will never forget him stepping up and that moment when you realized he was not going to get the momentum to make it all the way. And he fell back on his head and I thought, oh dear God, the mid cities Democrats have just killed Jim Wright. But he was fine. So Joel started his comments with potty humor in a way. So I thought maybe I'd start my comments with a little potty humor as well. The day of the filibuster in the Senate, I was most afraid of the fact that I was really going to need to relieve myself. And the rules in the Texas Senate are very different than they are at the federal level. At the federal level, a filibuster can occur. People take turns. I think you can even call in your dad gum remarks for the filibuster. It's become a very casual and easy thing to do, far too easy probably. But in the Texas Senate, the filibuster rules that traditionally were in place have continued to be in place. And what that means is that only one person may conduct the filibuster. They may receive questions from other members, which can help relieve their onus of having to talk the entire time. But they must stand at their desk. They may not sit. They may not lean. They may not touch their desk. They may not have a drink of water. They may not excuse themselves for bodily necessities. So I started asking when the thought of maybe doing the filibuster was coming up, well, you know, what do people do? Well, apparently the nurse for the Senate and the House, who is there in the Capitol every day, will hook you up, if you know what I mean. So I was really, really worried that this was going to be a part of what I had to deal with in the filibuster. And thank God the day kept wearing on, because once the word started getting out that I might be filibustering the public school funding bill, the Senate decided they probably ought to go ahead and try to pass everything they could before that started, because once I began speaking, they weren't going to have the opportunity before the close of session to get the remainder of the bills off of the agenda. With every passing half hour, I was so grateful that the time was going on. And fortunately, I think we got to like 10, 15, 10, 30 before I even had to stand up and conduct my filibuster, which meant that the only thing I had to worry about was having flat shoes on, but not being hooked up. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what brought me to what I'm doing now, a little bit of what is happening at the state level, and of course, to add to Joel's encouragement, his beautiful remarks. Joel is always so hard to follow as a speaker, but to add to his encouragement of each and every one of you. I got involved also kind of unwittingly, like Joel did, just getting involved in something that was going on in my neighborhood community. And many of you may have found yourselves here today because of a similar experience. But I lived right above the zoo, the four zoo, for many years, and many of you may remember this, some of you I think maybe too young to remember, the very controversial decision that the zoo engaged in to expand. Prior to the zoo having its current footprint, there were numerous soccer fields there, there was an amusement park there, there were baseball fields there, and it was widely used by a diverse group of people from throughout the Fort Worth community. And so there was a great deal of stress and tension about the expansion of the zoo, even from people who believed that improving the zoo was an important thing. And I stayed pretty much above the fray and out of all of that until it started affecting my own backyard, which tends to be the thing that most exercises people, right? And in my situation, the area behind my home, which had historically been the archery range for the zoo, was going to be paved to create more parking for the zoo. And so like so many people who speak at city council meetings, I went to a city council meeting. I was terrified of standing up and speaking before the city council. The way it's set up is so overwhelming when you're a neighborhood speaker who's never spoken before, a public group before, because the council diocese purposefully raised on high above the speakers. And it just feels like you are so small when you are standing there begging for your issue to be heard. And knowing and feeling how overwhelming that was, I'm very surprised to find myself conducting public speaking and debate on a continuing basis as my future unfolded. But that one first little involvement got me interested. And then when a seat opened up on the city council, when Catherine Barr's father ran for mayor, he was the city council person for that district, I just jumped into the race to run for it. The lesson I learned from that experience was that I really hadn't gotten involved in my community enough to ask for the privilege of serving them there. I actually lost my first city council race, so that's an encouragement for any of you who are considering running for public office and who may not succeed the first time. I know we have a couple of people here who have had an experience similar to mine, but who I hope will remain very, very engaged and dedicated to running for public office again in the future because their contributions will be great. But I didn't win that first time. Three years later I ran again and then began serving on the city council and my passions there really remained very much from the ones that put me there in the first place, the quality of life in the community that I lived in, making sure that we had good transportation. And fortunately I got very involved in the economic development of our community and found a real passion for economic development as well. At the state level, those same tenants, those same values are the things that I am continuing to try to work on. Quality of life, opportunity, investment in our future, making sure that we have created a strong path for our children and the children of others to follow. And in Texas right now, unfortunately, we're slipping back from the place where we once were in that regard. You may be surprised to know that the state of Texas is at almost the very bottom in the amount of money per student that it spends on public education. We actually are ranked 47 out of the 50 states. And our failure to appropriately invest reveals itself in what we see happening in terms of our dropout rates, what we see happening in terms of our SAT scores. And contrary to what Governor Perry said the other day about our SAT scores improving, in the last 10 years our SAT scores have actually slipped pretty significantly in all areas. And when we think about what it is we brand ourselves as as a state, we brand ourselves as a place where doing business is easy. Where we are the state that businesses wanna come to and grow and thrive. But what we're beginning to see and we're hearing more and more from our business community is we can't grow here. We can't attract others to join us here in the face of an ever-growing undereducated workforce or lack of a workforce that we have in Texas. The disinvestment in public education that occurred in the last legislative session was a five and a half billion dollar cut. And that is a very, very real cut. I learned the only difference between my experience on the city council and the state level is just the letter behind the dollar number. In Fort Worth we were always dealing in millions. At the state level we're dealing in billions. At the federal level of course they're dealing in trillions. But five and a half billion dollars cut from public ed is a hugely significant number in terms of the consequence that it wreaked on our school system. We saw a loss of about 18,000 educator jobs across the state. We saw our classroom size waiver requests increase from 2,000 waiver requests in the prior biennium to over 8,000 requests in the first year of this biennium alone. And what that means is for students in our kindergarten through fourth grade classrooms in the state of Texas now, most of our students are in classrooms with many more students than they once were. With teachers of course being tasked with having to teach and excel with that many more students in their classroom. At the same time that that disinvestment occurred the changing accountability system in Texas created an entirely new burden on our educators. The star testing system, how many of you have kids in the public school arena? Quite a few of you. And so for those of you who do I know you know all too well what that testing system has meant in terms of the stresses on your children, the stresses on our educators, the stresses on you. And it was a system that was set up that created a whole new dynamic in terms of how kids were tested, how many tests they had to pass in order to succeed at the same time that resources to the school districts were being dramatically decreased. That isn't the way to invest in the future of the state of Texas and it's not the way to invest in our future workforce for Texas. The former head of the US Census Bureau who has done a lot of work at the state demographic level, he's a professor now I think at Rice University, has done a lot of public speaking about the changing face of Texas, the changing demographic of Texas, what we're going to look like in 2030 as compared to our population today and what that population's educational attainment will be if we continue to track where we are today. And it spells a very alarming picture about the ability for Texas to continue to have bragging rights about a strong economy. As we launched this legislative session, we began it with a revenue estimate from our comptroller that indicated we are in a much better position than we thought we might be. The cynic might say that there was a purposeful underestimating that occurred in the prior two year sessions so that all of these cuts could be forced. The less cynical might say that at best this was a gross miscalculation of where we were going to be on a revenue picture but given that it was a gross miscalculation and now that we understand that it's not the reality, shouldn't it beg the question that we should go back and consider restoring the funds at least in public education and some of our healthcare arenas that those funds were cut. We cut $27 billion out of the state budget in the prior budgeting cycle and it's a huge percentage of the overall budget that had very human consequences, very real human consequences as part of it. As we begin our conversations in this session already there's this dynamic setting up with some, you've probably seen Governor Perry's comments in the paper and I don't think his comments are reflective of the Republican party as a whole but his personal sentiments are that that money, I forgot what he referred to it as. Charles, do you remember? Basically he said we shouldn't see this as easy money for us to grab and go start spending with glee. And of course that's not the situation that we're in in Texas. We're in a situation where we should be having a very real conversation about what the impacts of public education and other cuts have been and whether restoring the funding in those arenas is something that's worthwhile. He would have us for vision that the zoo engaged in to expand. Prior to the zoo having its current footprint there were numerous soccer fields there, there was an amusement park there, there were baseball fields there and it was widely used by a diverse group of people from throughout the Fort Worth community. And so there was a great deal of stress and tension about the expansion of the zoo even from people who believed that improving the zoo was an important thing. And I stayed pretty much above the fray and out of all of that until it started affecting my own backyard which tends to be the thing that most exercises people, right? And in my situation the area behind my home which had historically been the archery range for the zoo was going to be paved to create more parking for the zoo. And so like so many people who speak at city council meetings I went to a city council meeting I was terrified of standing up and speaking before the city council. The way it's set up is so overwhelming when you're a neighborhood speaker who's never spoken before, a public group before because the council diocese purposefully raised on high above the speakers and it just feels like you are so small when you are standing there begging for your issue to be heard. And knowing and feeling how overwhelming that was I'm very surprised to find myself conducting public speaking and debate on a continuing basis as my future unfolded. But that one first little involvement got me interested and then when a seat opened up on the city council when Catherine Barr's father ran for mayor he was the city council person for that district I just jumped into the race to run for it. The lesson I learned from that experience was that I really hadn't gotten involved in my community enough to ask for the privilege of serving them there. I actually lost my first city council race so that's an encouragement for any of you who are considering running for public office and who may not succeed the first time. I know we have a couple of people here who have had an experience similar to mine but who I hope will remain very very engaged and dedicated to running for public office again in the future because their contributions will be great. But I didn't win that first time three years later I ran again and then began serving on the city council and my passions there really remained very much from the ones that put me there in the first place. The quality of life in the community that I lived in making sure that we had good transportation and fortunately I got very involved in the economic development of our community and found a real passion for economic development as well. At the state level those same tenants those same values are the things that I am continuing to try to work on. Quality of life, opportunity, investment in our future making sure that we have created a strong path for our children and the children of others to follow. And in Texas right now unfortunately we're slipping back from the place where we once were in that regard. You may be surprised to know that the state of Texas is at almost the very bottom in the amount of money per student that it spends on public education. We actually are ranked 47 out of the 50 states. And our failure to appropriately invest reveals itself in what we see happening in terms of our dropout rates, what we see happening in terms of our SAT scores and contrary to what Governor Perry said the other day about our SAT scores improving in the last 10 years our SAT scores have actually slipped pretty significantly in all areas. And when we think about what it is we brand ourselves as as a state we brand ourselves as a place where doing business is easy. Where we are the state that businesses want to come to and grow and thrive but what we're beginning to see and we're hearing more and more from our business community is we can't grow here. We can't attract others to join us here in the face of an ever growing undereducated workforce or lack of a workforce that we have in Texas. The disinvestment in public education that occurred in the last legislative session was a five and a half billion dollar cut and that is a very, very real cut. I learned the only difference between my experience on the city council and the state level is just the letter behind the dollar number and Fort Worth we were always dealing in millions. At the state level we're dealing in billions. At the federal level of course they're dealing in trillions. But five and a half billion dollars cut from public ed is a hugely significant number in terms of the consequence that it wreaked on our school system. We saw a loss of about 18,000 educator jobs across the state. We saw our classroom size waiver requests increase from 2,000 waiver requests in the prior biennium to over 8,000 requests in the first year of this biennium alone. And what that means is for students in our kindergarten through fourth grade classrooms in the state of Texas now, most of our students are in classrooms with many more students than they once were with teachers of course being tasked with having to teach and excel with that many more students in their classroom. At the same time that that disinvestment occurred the changing accountability system in Texas created an entirely new burden on our educators. The STAR testing system, how many of you have kids in the public school arena? Quite a few of you. And so for those of you who do, I know you know all too well what that testing system has meant in terms of the stresses on your children, the stresses on our educators, the stresses on you. And it was a system that was set up that created a whole new dynamic in terms of how kids were tested, how many tests they had to pass in order to succeed at the same time that resources to the school districts were being dramatically decreased. That isn't the way to invest in the future of the state of Texas and it's not the way to invest in our future workforce for Texas. The former head of the US Census Bureau who has done a lot of work at the state demographic level, he's a professor now I think at Rice University, has done a lot of public speaking about the changing face of Texas, the changing demographic of Texas, what we're going to look like in 2030 as compared to our population today and what that population's educational attainment will be if we continue to track where we are today. And it spells a very alarming picture about the ability for Texas to continue to have bragging rights about a strong economy. As we launched this legislative session, we began it with a revenue estimate from our comptroller that indicated we are in a much better position than we thought we might be. The cynic might say that there was a purposeful underestimating that occurred in the prior two year sessions so that all of these cuts could be forced. The less cynical might say that at best this was a gross miscalculation of where we were going to be on a revenue picture but given that it was a gross miscalculation and now that we understand that it's not the reality, shouldn't it beg the question that we should go back and consider restoring the funds at least in public education and some of our healthcare arenas that those funds were cut. We cut $27 billion out of the state budget in the prior budgeting cycle and it's a huge percentage of the overall budget that had very human consequences, very real human consequences as part of it. As we begin our conversations in this session already, there's this dynamic setting up. With some, you've probably seen Governor Perry's comments in the paper and I don't think his comments are reflective of the Republican party as a whole but his personal sentiments are that that money, I forgot what he referred to it as. Charles, do you remember? Basically he said we shouldn't see this as easy money for us to grab and go start spending with glee. And of course that's not the situation that we're in in Texas. We're in a situation where we should be having a very real conversation about what the impacts of public education and other cuts have been and whether restoring the funding in those arenas is something that's worthwhile. He would have us for this session say otherwise but I know there are many in the legislature, the House and the Senate on both sides of the party aisle who are interested in trying to get us back to a better place for our future and that's what I hope to be an important part of working on. My experiences in terms of the value of that investment really come from so much of the work that the city of Fort Worth has done and that I had the privilege to be a part of for many years. I chaired our economic development committee here for about eight of the nine years that I was on the city council and so much happened during that time and we got so creative and good at putting together public-private partnerships that helped to grow the city's economy. We learned some hard lessons along the way. We learned that if we didn't write these deals tightly enough the jobs that we hoped would be created by them, the investment we hoped would be realized by them wouldn't occur. And we learned how to write a very tight agreement. We learned how to assure that incentives were earned before they were paid by the city versus having to go and claw those incentives back. And so much of that has helped to develop the city of Fort Worth in a uniquely positive way as compared to many other communities in the state of Texas. If you look at some of the activity that's occurred not just in our downtown core but in other parts of our city as well you can see that there's been a real effort to make sure that all citizens in Texas are benefiting from economic growth. The new Walmart in Southeast Fort Worth off of 287 I can assure you that there was a point in time 10 years ago when no one would have imagined that that kind of economic investment in that community was possible. And not only has it created of course a financial investment there but it's created a human investment by creating jobs, by finally giving so many in a food desert area a place where they will be able to go and buy healthy food for themselves and their families. And I know that's one of the things that you all are thinking about and talking about. The project that some of you did for Dezavala is all about that nutritional aspect of the quality of lives that we lead here in Fort Worth. But it's been nice to take that experience of working on things like that and trying to translate those ideas to the state level. What I would encourage you as you get involved more involved, you're obviously very involved already but more involved in your community here that you grow a passion for carrying the ideas that you generate as part of your work with this group to the state level. I've found that that contact, that very daily constant contact as Joel called it the retail level of politics that occurs at the local level doesn't occur at the level that it should in the state. And it can be far too easy for state elected officials to vote in ways that are reflective of some very narrow and very powerful lobby interests in the capital and that aren't reflective of the very broad, very important, very real interests that should be reflected in the capital. So please pay attention to what we're doing there and make sure that your voice is heard there as we continue through the legislative session. I congratulate each and every one of you for putting your foot on the path of getting more involved in your community. And as Joel said, if you keep your feet pointed in the direction of something that you are coming to feel passionate about or already feel passionate about, I promise you it will take you to places that you never expected you would be. Certainly wouldn't have ever expected that one day I would be worrying about whether I needed to be hooked up to a device in order to stand up and talk to a roomful of people. It's really an honor and privilege to be invited to speak to you all today. And if you want me to take questions, I will just, or I'm happy to sit down and shut up too if you guys are ready to go finish your day. Yes, sir. Yeah, that's a fantastic question for those of you who might not have heard. His question, it was about the redistricting that occurred in the last legislative session, the work that so many people here in our local community engaged in in order to create a successful outcome of that battle. And the fact that there still may be an ongoing battle with regard to the way those lines were drawn and what can we do as a community to be involved, to stay involved in the importance of that issue. I will tell you that from my experience, redistricting has probably played the most important role in the way we see governance occurring not just in the state but across the country today. If you think about what redistricting's purpose is, and both parties have used it for this purpose, this is not to condemn either party, but its purpose is to create very safe districts for particular parties to run in and to maximize those to the extent possible. Over time, generation after generation as redistricting's have occurred and reoccurred and reoccurred and those lines have shifted and tightened and the districts get safer and safer and safer, what we see is that we have dramatically Republican districts and dramatically Democratic ones and very few like this Senate district, this is the only Senate district in the state where it's about 50-50. When you have a district that's about 50-50, as you can imagine, conversations that take place during an election require that the person who is elected is going to be representative of all of those interests, but when you have elections in districts that are very purely drawn, general elections don't even matter. There never is a real general election. What matters are primaries and because primaries become the thing that matters, that electorate or that person who is elected becomes much and much, much more pressured by the need to answer to a particular party perspective on the Democratic side, further to the left and on the Republican side, further to the right. And just in my short time in the Capitol, what I've seen happen is our traditional Republican thinkers because primarily redistricting has been something that's benefited the creation of greater and stronger Republican districts over the last couple of decades, but our Republican members have come under increasing heat by the further right of their party, even though they may not be those type of thinkers themselves and they're having a hard time doing things that they believe are the right things for their community because they're told, if you do that, we are going to run someone against you. We will make sure people believe that you are not conservative enough, you are not fiscally conservative enough, you are not the kind of responsible person and government that they want and we'll run you out of that office. And it's been happening. We're losing very good bipartisan thinking solution oriented members to ideological fringes. So that was a long way of answering your question but that's why these redistricting battles matter so much. Senate District 10, the district that I represent almost went to an extreme and had it not been for people in our community standing up and fighting for their own rights to exercise the ability to elect candidates of their choice, we wouldn't have a 50-50 Senate district today like we do, we wouldn't have Congressional District 33 which Mark Visee was elected to run in and unfortunately the state is continuing to challenge the decisions that were made at the district court level in those redistricting decisions and they may be upended once again. So stay involved in it because the outcome of it has so much more to do than just what a district looks like or who lives in it or who represents it has everything to do with the way we're going to head as a state in terms of our entire future and it's going to have an impact on all of us whether it's the district that we live in or a district in South or West or East Texas. Is that better? Yes. Thank you for your comments today especially regarding public education and healthcare. You know as our committee sets up this program, this pilot program at Dezavala Elementary, first of all we're amazed that we've made it this far to have a pilot program but we realize we're hitting a glass ceiling because right now the Fort Worth Independent School District over 50% of the students are overweight or obese and we're finding that the district has about $1.20 to spend on every student per day which is only about 20 cents more than we spend on our inmates for food in prison. We've come up with a menu that costs $1.80 a student. It's completely healthy, re-engineered, local, fresh but there's that 60 cent divide that's equaling about a $50,000 increase per school for every one of the schools, of the 84 schools in the Fort Worth Independent School District. What would your advice or guidance be? In our committee would love to see this program successful and rolled out to schools across the city and state eventually. What can we do locally or maybe on a state level to really push for working for helping bridge that 60 cent gap for the benefit of our young generation, 14 million of which are overweight, obese in this country and partnering with Fit Worth and other programs to reduce that number from seven hours that students spend in front of the screen every day staring at a TV lower. What can we do specifically? What advice would you have for us as we deal with this glass ceiling at Dezavala for a very worthwhile program that what we're hearing is there's just not enough funding? That's always the unfortunate place that things get bottled up. It's always about resources of course and first of all congratulations for the excellent work that you all have done on that project. I would suggest two things. One, just mentioning it to me today has planted a seed in my mind that this is something I would like to explore at the legislature. So just making sure you're having a conversation with the people that represent you at the state level is terribly important. Whoever your state rep is, whoever your state senator is, engage them. Call their local offices, their district offices and ask for a meeting. You may not get it with the legislator but you'll get it with someone on their staff and it really does help create the kinds of ideas that gain momentum at the state level. I never would have even thought about that if I hadn't heard you say that today. The other thing that I think is terribly important and very possible in the city of Fort Worth, we have such an incredible private community of givers. It's really remarkable. I just met yesterday with the person Michael Radler who invested the resources to save the Forest Park swimming pool which has been a passion of mine for a long time and a passion of Joel's for a long time. And he stepped up and brought forward the private resources to do that. The Rainwater Foundation has adopted an entire school community in East Fort Worth and they are going to build literally that concept of it takes a village around the children in that school community in an extremely innovative and powerful way. So we know we have people in this community that want to do good things for particularly our children. And I would encourage you to begin exploring those avenues as well to see if you might be able to get some matching grants. Maybe if the state would put up X, a private grant would put up Y. And then finally, one of the ideas that I've been kicking around as we go into this session, you've probably heard that there's a move afoot to support vouchers in the state of Texas. And the way the concept is being rolled out is that a business could donate monies for a scholarship slot to a private or parochial school and then they would be given a tax credit against their business margins tax that they owe to the state. So I've been thinking about that a lot in the last few weeks and thinking, well, if that makes sense to do in the private and the parochial arena, why doesn't it make sense to do it in the public arena as well? Why couldn't we allow some sort of a tax credit program for a private business that might, for example, donate sufficiently to allow a dollar 80 to be spent on food for a particular school? And I think that it's the great thing that came out of the voucher conversation. I don't support vouchers at all in any form is that it does sort of lend some great ideas about what we can do in the public arena. So talk to our office about that because that might be an idea that we can float. I've been looking for specific projects that we could tag with creating that kind of an incentive. Okay, thank you all so much.