 Thank you mayor Betsy I'm really happy you asked me to come here because I look at this group, and I talked to some of them and to me These are the most interesting people in the world Because you are our budding decision-makers and you are the steering team For this city of Fort Worth coming up us old guys Are ready for you guys To keep us going on to better and higher things and you have all kinds of tools to do it that we don't like this stuff You know I've never seen it that while someone's speaking the tweets come up So all I can say is I want two thumbs up every time up there, okay? Okay, you can tell each other what you really think when it's over But for now be nice okay well, I I I I Imagine that all of you just by the nature of the fact that you are part of this Organization steer Fort Worth that you're working with our mayor that you think Fort Worth is a pretty good place. It's a pretty good place to live and bring up your families and So forth and that gives you an interest in our city and doing things for working with our city Well, believe me That's exactly what I think And I have been deeply involved since I went away to school and started my business in New Mexico But I've been deeply involved since I was drawn back here in about 1980 and Today I want to discuss with you two things that I think are really so important at the heart of why this is Fort Worth a great place One of them those things is very tangible and That's our public facility. This city is rich in public facilities And any great city must be that's one of the definitions and we're fortunate that we are very wealthy in our public Facilities wealth, you know is not a matter of money. It's a matter of being able to forwardly organize Our our our lives in a positive way and our public facilities help that for the life of our Community now the other is an intangible That you can just call very quickly Quality of life. We have a real quality of life here in Fort Worth and again. I think that's probably part of all of your Attitude why this is a great place and we can look at other cities in Texas and be very proud We think we have amongst the best if not the best quality of life Here in Fort Worth. Well, I want to tell you these two things our public facilities and our quality of life are inextricably intertwined They have very much to do with each other our Those facilities contribute to quality of life that value that we have for quality of life Contributes to why we have these facilities so you can just look around you where we are today You drove in you saw into the Fort Worth botanic garden now This is a wonderful botanic garden. It's of unusual size and quality for a city like Fort Worth Right in the heart of the city which means almost by definition It was created carved out in the early days of our city together with Trinity Park and all the wonderful stretch of parkland there It was created by what I'm going to call our forebearers our forebearers the the you know The grandfathers and great-grandfathers of people here in the room The people they are early days of Fort Worth my mother's family came to Fort Worth five brothers and three sisters After the Civil War that came from Georgia, which was in shambles and So that would be my great great great Uncle was the first police chief in Fort Worth Another one was Was a fire chief in Fort Worth at that time But these are the kind of people that are forebearers and for those who didn't weren't born or don't have family originally in Fort Worth You can appreciate there you're adopted forebearers and They've given us something here for the public enjoyment. It's free of charge. It's a wonderful place to bring kids It's a wonderful place to come for quiet contemplation to to discover nature and so forth now This botanic garden is also supported today Improved today sustained today by three private organizations The Fort Worth Garden Club built and operates all the conservatory and education complex over here The Fort Worth Botanical Society over by the Rock Springs building over looks so looks over the the takes care of The Japanese Garden and the newcomer in town Brit whose building we're in here Built this building on the side of the old worn out public health building Which used to be fenced off with cyclone fence from the garden and we Had the idea I say we because I'm part of Brit of Putting our fence out there and integrating this into the campus of the garden and expanding the education facilities Expanding the parking with a area. I don't know if you appreciate Somewhere you can read on the wall about this parking area. It collects all the rainfall. There's no runoff from this parking area it collects it and recycles that and much of it is caught in basins out there and sinks down into the back into the ground into the aquifer and Stuff that runs over there is kept in a pond over here and it goes back to irrigate and it goes on the green roof here and so That's part of what what we did with this so this is a public-private partnership in one reason It's a great garden now I'm going to stay in the neighborhood because right across the streets the will Rogers Center built by our forebearers in 1936 now what an incredible facility for generation after generation Because of all of the events of course the Fort Worth Stocks show and rodeo is the highest profile That wouldn't be the show it was if it weren't for these public facilities. They're owned by and operated by the city Today they bring the most lucrative convention and visitor business you can get Equestrian shows I always say anybody that shows horses has disposable income by definition And they dispose of it here in Fort Worth a large chunk of it It's really it's really quite wonderful when I was a kid. That's where you went ice skating The skating rink was very operative Still some of the public shows are not at the convention center circuses and so forth This is a great facility now. It has been expanded grown improved over the years Through public-private partnership because the stock show has been very active at taking The its earnings and putting them back in the city's facilities so they can be used 12 months of the year The stock show is invested more than 50 million dollars in present-day dollar terms in the Facilities of the will Rogers complex. You don't have to go far up the road to find the zoo a fabulous zoo especially for a city of this of this size and when I say of this size we may be 750,000 people now, but it was only two decades ago We were like 350,000 people and still we have that zoo and of course that is a wonderful public-private Partnership with a Fort Worth zoo association that actually under contract with the city Operates it. It's it's an interesting deal the city owns all the facilities and the zoo association owns all the animals They couldn't do without each other obviously So do we see a pattern here well we really do we're lucky in Fort Worth one because of our forebearers the vision they had and The willingness to make investments to Start these cap these beautiful facilities public facilities And they were doing it to make them set make Fort Worth proud at their time But they were doing it thinking of us We also are very lucky for our value the value for quality that we have We understand quality of life is the number one issue in the city you live in and One reason it's so important is what you want most for your children not just for your own pleasure We're very lucky that the public sector and the private sector are both interested in these things and That here we really know how to work together in public private Partnerships some of them going back decades others quite new others just for special purposes And then they and then they dissolve so Here's a lesson in all of this for us we Are somebody's forebearers? We are the forebearers we're the forebearers of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so We have the same responsibilities that our forebearers had every generation must build and must renew What has been built before Because cities are living organism you can't just put them aside on a shelf to admire them They're like they're like your dog You've got to feed them every day you've got to love them every day You've got to take care of their health when they fall ill And they will give you no end of love and pleasure back a city will give you no end of love and pleasure back If you take care of it If you take care, they will thrive if you if you neglect your city It will become despondent and decrepit and die away now All of this when we talk about these public facilities it takes investment It takes capital Investment just by definition and We're a great city because over the decades we have made those capital investments or our forebearers have not not us And so doing so it cost every generation It's our responsibility. I would say there's a thing called intergenerational Neutrality and basically what that means what I do is not taken away From what the next generations will get but what I do gives enough to my generation That I'm not just slaving away and getting nothing in order to provide for the future generations And that's what makes a great city. We wouldn't have a great spirit if we were slaving away thinking We got to make things good in 40 years, but now we can we can skimp And that's it. That's important to remember Now one thing that you encounter in this world today and This is something always been around, but I think it's come to more prominence You would counter what I'm going to call the tax naysayers Okay There there are always a certain number of people are always have been always will Who think that there is virtue in not having to pay taxes? There are people in this city that think that keeping up the streets picking up the garbage Delivering the water keeping the peace and putting out fires is all we need to pay for well And that's what I'm calling tax naysayers Say there shouldn't be taxes. There shouldn't be government though at the same time Many tax naysayers May use our public facilities and our services very very liberally somehow they just don't think it's fair for them to have to pay for it Now you are intelligent men and women your professionals You're you're in the most exciting parts of your lives in your careers. You're working hard To improve things for your family and so forth Because you know that you get what you pay for you know your hard work and your drive Lead to success so you were paying for your homes your cars you're paying for education For your kids Though it may be through a public system you're paying for your entertainment You know you get what you pay for And what you pay for gives you a better quality of life So If you think in the bigger scale of our city and the longer term of your kids generation and your grandkids generation It's up to us to be making capital investments just like You may own your home and you pay every month on a mortgage and one day you'll you'll own a clear of debt We must build things and the city take out debt and we will pay for it every year So that one day debt-free our kids Will have the kind of facilities the kind of city Yes, the quality of streets and sidewalks and sewers and storm drainage But also the quality of facilities that you can use for entertainment education sport All of those things those kind of capital The facilities so that we have them it's incumbent on all of us you me the mayor To to build To To make investments today with our money and hard work to build for our children those things That will ensure what what's here today will be obsolete It'll be too small. It'll be outdated somehow In the future because we got it from two to three generations ago It's incumbent on us to keep that process up and moving We don't have a Lot a lot of capital capacity here in Fort Worth. We struggle with that every year in the budgets We have to choose very carefully how we expend it We have to make decisions on that But one thing we can't afford to do you know City like all businesses has cycles if we think that every time there's An upcycle and things are good and the money's coming into the city budget and we have some surplus Let's cut the taxes That wouldn't be a good day way to run business. I'm making more money this year. I'm gonna cut my prices Because then when the cycle goes and it's tight and we don't have money and you've got to cut something in today's world You can't raise taxes back where they were we have to look at this intelligently and long-term and make these investments for our kids