 I want to welcome everyone to district one and I definitely want to welcome our mayor, Mayor Rickleman, and Dr. Bussells, Councilman Dr. Bussells. I want to commend the mayor today, you know how traditionally we used to do the state of the city, which was so exciting, can I say that? And so one thing about the mayor's entrepreneurial spirit, you know, he's a serial entrepreneur and he likes to try new things and he tries to get us as the city to do different things. He wanted a different approach to the state of the city and he said, instead of bringing everyone to one place, how about do a tour and go to the different districts? And so our first stop, luckily we're number one, so the first stop is here in district one. I love the idea. And then this also allows us to hear more about our district and what's going on here, which I think is super fabulous, because sometimes we kind of get all in the mix. So I want to welcome you all. I want to welcome everyone and you for coming. I'm glad you all came. I think this is going to be fun. And then I am going to turn it over to me. Yes. Hi, everyone, I'm Audity Vessels. I have the pleasure of representing the entire city as one of your at-large council members. But district one has a special place in my heart because many of you know, I probably would have walked here if I wasn't going to show up sweaty or what is my hood and I really love the growth and the vibrancy of our district. So excited to be here with you all and talk about all of the work that we're doing. And also want to really commend, you know, mayor for all of the great work that he's done just jumping right in. And I think what's been pretty evident that you'll notice in our city council meetings as well is that the process has been very collaborative. You know, we all have a say, we all, he listens to all of our opinions and perspectives while making a decision. And there's so many projects that we get to work on truly together. And so the things that you saw scrolling on the PowerPoint is just a snippet of the things that we've accomplished in the last, you know, year and a half. And I can speak on behalf of council that we are all very passionate about making sure that our districts, whether it's district one or district four, have access to the same opportunities and have, you know, the same kind of strategic vision of being this vibrant, beautiful city. So very excited to participate with Mayor Rickamon, and I will pass it over to him. Thank you. Welcome everybody, and welcome to the first of five town halls. As we said, we're going to try something different, and part of it is coming and really being in a district and having the opportunity to sit in front of you. I know we sent out, we tried to send out some information to get some questions before. We do have cards here tonight, so that if there's something that you hear about, see about, suggestion, opportunity or anything, please share it with us and we'll get back to you in writing so that you have that, but we want to make sure that we're continuing the dialogue and part of getting away from the standard state of the city was really to have an opportunity to really sit down and have an open conversation. I think this is what we're trying to do. You know, town halls always are, I think, the best way to approach and engage our community, and, you know, coming here, and we use the word we a lot. And you'll hear all of us say that. It's not me, it's not Tina, it's not Abiti, it's not Howard, it's not Will, it's not Peter, it's all of us combined, Reverend McDowell, all of us combined working together, communicating and really advocating for a city as a whole. And when we say we, we also include you all because you're part of the puzzle. A lot of the things that we're doing today that you'll hear about and the general discussion of the city, but then also as we continue to talk about the district, a lot of it's from input that we get from our community. And look, we're human, we're not perfect. We still got a lot of things to do, but our goal is to collectively bring everybody together and make this the number one city in South Carolina. Not based on population, but based on livability. And I think we're doing that as you've seen, we've gotten some nice shout outs from various groups saying this is the best place to live in South Carolina. I believe that. I think a lot of people believe that, but we have to continue to push that forward and work together. So tonight, as we mentioned, we had sent out some stuff, so we've got a few questions that we'll talk about later on, but I'm going to start off with talking a little bit about citywide. As we keep continuing, Mayor Benjamin coined one Columbia, and I still believe that. We are one Columbia. We've adapted a little of this open Columbia from the sense of that we're open for ideas, we're open for business, we're open up for innovation, but we're also open for criticism. And to know how we look at it, criticism to us, sometimes people say, well, that's a complaint. I take it as a compliment, because if you didn't care, then you wouldn't have told us. You'd have just put it on the internet, we'd never be able to solve something. So I always encourage people, if there is something that you see that we're not doing, please engage with us. But every business at public service, neighborhoods, district, law enforcement, firefighters, government officials, schools, churches, citizens are all part of this city. You're all part of the puzzle. And we can't talk about one without the other. Can't talk about strong neighborhoods without strong businesses. They have to co-insist. And we're in a heart of a great historic district. And we're going to continue to make that district stronger and better in part of it. And we're seeing that growth. You're seeing things happen here. But we can't do it if we don't have a United Team. And part of our job at the city is laying the groundwork for growth, developing our community, bringing people together in partnerships. Collaboration was one of the negatives that we heard for a long, long time in Columbia. And I think we're trying to do more collaborations so that we are working together, trying new approaches. We're going to continue to try. But a lot of these approaches, as I said, are community-led initiatives. And we're going to continue to grab on that and grow with that. But the city of Columbia shouldn't be doing everything. We should be the seed, the uniter, bringing people together and spurring those ideas. And maybe we plant the seed, but somebody else minds it takes care of that garden and grows that idea. But we, us as council, city council can't do it without all the magical people here. So I'd like an opportunity before we sit there and move before I move forward, really. I'd like all the city staff to stand up, because I think y'all deserve a round of applause for all y'all do for us. Without our city staff, without the colleagues on council, we wouldn't be moving things forward. We are going after long projects that have been out there. Spenley Park, the Vista Greenway, access to the riverfront. We have this beautiful, I mean, not many communities have three rivers that come together. And for a long time, we've had limited access. And opening that up, that also helps with our tourism. Y'all know we get 16 million visitors a year in Columbia? 16 million. But only five and a half spend the night. So one of our things is continuing to open up and give people reasons to spend the night here, spend more money in our restaurants and retail and be part of it. But you've got the Bull Street District, which now, hopefully, as we talk about the connectivity that we get on the Main Street corridor to tire historic neighborhoods, some of you tire Elmwood, Earlwood, and Cotton Town with Bull Street. You bring the rest of Maine from our other historic neighborhoods and bring them into the community to support those businesses that are here and growing. We're getting more restaurants. I bring people on Main Street all the time in this corridor to show them where the opportunity is. Because I don't know that there's another place that has opportunity as there is right here in our backyard. There's not a lot of places a small business could go, plant their seed, and be able to see the statehouse. I challenge people to find somewhere else in the southeast where you can do that. And it's still affordable, livable, and you're surrounded by great neighborhoods. And we continue to try to do things like we brought together Love Your Rock grants, trying to put community promotions back in, giving people opportunity to work with their neighborhoods to improve signs. We're changing out lighting. We're doing all these things where we can, but we also want to help the neighborhoods do their part, which is give them the seed money, public art coming down the road, which we're really, really excited about, and bringing that to all neighborhoods, not just the Main Street corridor or our main entertainment districts between our traveling art programs, which we'll talk about more. But if you look at the items that we saw up here tonight, it's just a sampling of what it is. And it's hundreds of millions of dollars, thousands of hours of staff time, lots of innovation. And we continue to do that because that's what we're supposed to do. And what you're seeing is the puzzle being put together. We're going to stick with that puzzle thing, because I think everything is about as puzzle pieces connecting people together, connecting businesses together. So let's start with public service, our essential functions. The city of Columbia is constantly working to ensure the city has a clean, safe, and enjoyable, accessible city. So many people think we're just about water. But we got 911. We got street divisions. We got engineering. We got solid waste. We got our billing departments, our planning departments, our fire department, our courts, planning and zoning, parking. That's just to name a few. We have 17 departments that provide you some type of service in our city. And I think that's very important. And I'll tell you a little sidebar. One of the things that's excited me is that we're going to do it again. But about a year ago, we had an opportunity to sit down with all the employees in each one of these departments, especially the folks that are out in, if they were at wastewater, the first people you touch with, and learn from them about things that we were doing that was actually not helping them get their job done. So getting the innovation from the folks who are actually doing the job. And I think that's one of the exciting things is that we're getting these ideas in a lava that's internally and from our community. And I think it's incredible. Over the last year, we've completed water meeting project 150,000 meters. We have 150,000 water customers in our system. That really helps our community grow, because that's an economic engine. We've upgraded to the digital units, continuing to deal with the backlog. When we started a year ago in February, hey, Ms. Gale, when we were in February, we did a press conference. And we came together and said, hey, we got a problem here. We have all these backlogs, but this is how we're going to deal with it. And we've done that. We've chopped that down. And that was innovation from contract extensions, working with small businesses, but also listening to our staff. How can we make things better? Flex hours. How we lower those. I mean, I know a lot of people have seen it. They wear we have an issue with customer service, and they call them. We've been driving those call times down and getting people's problems solved quicker and faster by listening to the employees who were actually there working, not trying to do it from down the street. So all of that is saying that's a large part of our responsibility is counsel. Every day, these public servants are in our departments. They're working hard to ensure that everything's done effectively and efficiently. And we're giving them the tools. We're investing in the city. That was part of the vision of counsel, was to make sure we invest in the city. Investing in our employees, not only by bringing everybody into their compensation and to a competitive compensation, but giving them the tools, the technology, and the training to actually do their job with the autonomy to do that. Then obviously, the biggest part of our responsibility is making sure our city's safe. And in today's world, a lot of that can be challenging. Thank God we have a chief and a police force who are dedicated to you all. I would go behind each and every one of those officers any day of the week to support them, because I think what they do for us is incredible. They deal with more issues than any other police department there is. And they're doing it, quite frankly, shorthand. Today, it's much harder to recruit for police officers, but we're getting better by reaching out and talking to folks and giving them, doing the things to improve the quality of life of each one of our officers. It's not just pay. It's about having the ability to know that people support you, are giving you the technology and the training to do your job the best that they can. And they're spending a lot of time. And I know that we continue to approve that, and we hope we can continue to approve that, but we're making the investments. Obviously, we did our gun violence assessment action plan that came out back in August of 2023, just a month ago. And I'll tell you what's so exciting about that is that was driven by our staff. That was done in our police department with the technology, the logic, the records that they're keeping to do what, on a national level, people pay lots of money for, and we talked to a consultant and he said, I don't need to come down there. You've already got everything at your fingertips, but what's great about that, that'll house us then to move forward and continue to really have an opportunity to take those issues and address them where they are. We know exactly where our issues are and how they are. So now we can start getting to the root, which is people, places of behavior that allow us then to do prevention, intervention, and ultimately sometimes enforcement. Real crime time center. We got a real crime time center, where we now our cameras and the cameras that get hooked in from different folks and businesses, we now can see things in a lifetime. And we're growing that system throughout the city and everywhere so that we can have folks monitoring so that we can help prevent and create intervention opportunities. Obviously, you know, we began hope and order. Hope and order is our, our plan to tie into the overall homeless plan where we are trying to improve the quality of life for our residents, take care of the unsheltered at the same time. But we're at a tipping point and I think we have to be honest with ourselves, we're there at that tipping point where our residents and our businesses and others are getting to the point where hey, we need to do something different. We need to address this differently. It started off with, you know, rapid shelter and we're working on different enforcement, working on, as you know, we close Bain's best. We're looking at other stores, all right, how do we work together to provide that we're not helping people's addiction go on, we're reducing it, we're getting them into help and to wrap around services. Obviously, we restructured code enforcement and with increased productivity and accountability, it's still a challenge for us in some areas when especially when it comes to some of the houses that we have to go through a court. There's a process, we can't just go tear something down. I wish we could just go tear everyone up down and go ahead and rebuild something new immediately but we are, we've come to close to 20 out of the 60 that we have pushed to get demolished and we're going into those areas and rebuilding and we are sparking that by working with construction companies and others and mortgage companies to get first-time home buyers and back into our neighborhood, start building it up because a lot of people won't realize that about 46,000 parcels of residential in our city and 50%, no really 53% of it to be quite frank is rental property. I'd like to see us move that up to more home ownership and help people make that transition and that's one of our goals, partnering with the Housing Authority, they have a program to help folks get through and making sure that teachers and police officers and young families have an opportunity to build up equity. It's the quickest way to build up individual wealth. Now some people don't wanna do that and that's okay but we ought to make sure we have programs to do that and then we launched the USC Ambassador Program and it's a test model, it's a pilot for us to put ambassadors to work in areas that have rentals, especially around with college students to make sure that everybody's working together to make sure that trash is picked up, that neighborhoods kept clean, that noise ordinance and if this works there, I think it's an opportunity for us to expand that program throughout the city to really ensure that quality of life in our neighborhoods are number one. Obviously extremely excited about the Office of Violent Crime, our new director is, can you stand please? This is our new Mr. Fordham, our new director. We're excited to have him here. Believe me, he has been on the ground running and meeting and really looking at how we take that role of being the quarterback for this issue and really focus on how do we prevent. As y'all know, the majority of our shooting is young people between 18 and 24. So the more that we can do and that brings up a great program to just talk about a little bit quickly too is one of the community leaders came out with hey, we wanna try a skilled training center. We know that there's a gentleman out of Charlotte who's got an electrical and HVAC training program. It provides tools. Well, Ms. Herbert and I met with them got them involved in the incubator. They now got funded through a grant process $100,000 to give scholarships to folks in 29203 and parts of 29204 that may not have had an opportunity to get this type of training, which will allow them A to get a job the day they graduate but also it gives them an opportunity they can start their own business. They actually leave with a full tool set to give them the up in their opportunity to go. It's been a very successful program in Charlotte and we're excited that we had it here but that came from a kitchen table discussion. And so when we say everybody's part of the puzzle we mean it. Obviously, we had an opportunity to partner with Richland One in the governor's office to do the jobs for American graduate program. It was the only program we had and Richland One was at CA Johnson. We now have it in every high school in our city. This program is an incredible program and I think Richland One would tell you it's probably their best program that they have, their blue ribbon program. It's got about a 92% success rate and it follows kids from their freshman year until their freshman year in college. That program takes kids that may be challenged in school and helps make sure that they're getting the extracurricular help that they need, the guidance that they need, opportunities to do internships, opportunities to have jobs. But they also will chase them down if they don't show up to school and make sure they get back into school and that they're part of that program. And we're excited about the governor put a challenge out for the first 25 schools to sign up. He would pay for 75% of it. Well, I signed up eight of our schools for it immediately and then we got Richland One and the city of Columbia signed up and we made the difference of the 25%. Obviously the fire department is the other key to our public safety. You know, obviously we inspect every school, every apartment complex and we do every business. And they do that not to be a hassle but to prevent, to make sure that when you start your business or you move into that apartment that it's safe, it has the monitoring that it needs. If it's the carbon monoxide, if it's our smoke alarm, which I have to brag they gave over 227 free smoke alarms and installed them for citizens in this community in the last 12 months. And obviously the city council we've invested, we have invested in our firefighters from equipment needs. It took us a while to get there but we got second year for them. We're working on a new fire station. We're working on, we have now a consultant that we brought in to help us look at where we need to make the best investments, not only to make sure our firefighters are safe but our citizens are safe. And then obviously, we approved the pay raise which I think was very important in this era more than there ever is. Our next big one is obviously homeless initiatives and we open the rapid shelter with a place to say, all right, we got to start tackling the un-sheltered. We got to find another place that we can get folks in there, where's Ms. Camisha? Ms. Camisha, we stand up. That is our director of homeless services right there, Ms. Hepburn. And I'm gonna tell you, she jumped into this saddle last September and took it by the bull, by the horns and has done an incredible job and we're still continuing to move that needle but that's another reason council said, hey, we got to move forward. We have some money that we can use for this. Let's get this done. The city manager and her team were able to get us 50 pallet homes built up and set up in 65 days. 65 days so that we can make sure it come November we had an opportunity to get folks into those pallet homes and begin the ability to get around rapid services and really make a difference. Obviously we're working on trying to do some collaboration around serving of the food, trying to get people into a safe environment where we have bathrooms and a kitchen and HVAC and out of the elements. For two reasons, one, I think it's a much safer place for people to get a meal and have a bathroom and feel dignified sitting at a table and enjoying it. It also gives us an opportunity to reach out to those folks and see is there anything we can do to get them one step closer into service and get wrap around service, help them get, make sure that they have their IDs and the things that they need to make sure that they can get their benefits and then we can take that from there to get them into temporary housing and hopefully permanent housing with an opportunity to get job or if they have mental health issues can we help get them to the right clinician, get them into a program or addiction services which is a big part of that population. Obviously our whole goal at the end of the day really is long term, let's build a one stop shop. And when I say that a one stop shop that doesn't interfere with residents, it doesn't interfere with businesses but it provides the necessary services. And we say that we're talking about something that has urgent care, that's physical therapy that has clinicians on staff that has catering opportunities and temporary or permanent addiction and mental health capacity for guests to stay in their own room and get the treatment on an ongoing basis along with the ability to get outside and share but get all the services we've talked to DMV about bringing in the emergency services so that people can get their IDs on site. Right now volunteers take people on an individual basis and that usually is a four hour process to do that. Think about if we could do people as they come in and get them everything they need, de-heck in the next room so that they need a birth certificate or anything so that they can make sure because 54% of the homeless population in our community are from here. That we know today. We still have a service that we also help get people transportation to go back to their community where they may have a family member or somebody there that can help make sure that they're getting into the process. And I love for Dr. Vussels who headed up our homeless task force to add anything to it and then obviously follow up from our district rep as well. Well I think that this has been the top of the mind issue for many people. I often say that we used to get more calls about this than your water bill and because the problem is real but it's complex and I want you to know that we have addressed it in a very intentional way but the work is still going and what you all can do as you're learning this information is first of all share that we have this resource available. In the past it had always been we don't have enough beds. Well I can tell you that there have been some nights that there have been pallets open and no one has taken those beds and so what that's saying is there's another issue of maybe lack of knowledge or more I think complex issues like lack of trust or what we often see which is co-occurring, mental health, addiction, criminal activity. So when that happens it's gonna take all of us to really make an effort to change the culture of helping our neighbors and also reporting when you see illegal or criminal activity so that we can do our job and help keep our community safe. The process of us getting to the rapid shelter I want you to know was one that we took a lot of input from our providers, from all of you I remember coming to Elmwood's meeting early last year and we talked a lot about some of the issues that were being faced. We talked, we met with our mainstream businesses five points, we learned from business owners, we learned from providers, we talked to our local housing and urban development so it was really a way for us to gather information and truly understand what was happening. We even looked at the 2013 homeless committees recommendation and unfortunately a lot of those strategies that had not been implemented or if they had they weren't working. And so we hope that through this approach where we are providing that quick rapid housing we're able to get folks to a safe single occupancy space. One of the things that we learned was that that traditional shelter model doesn't always work for people. They don't necessarily want to be, who wants to be in a room with 100 other people? Especially when you think about some of the trauma or some of the other experiences that they may have had. And so to have this opportunity to have your own space. And I want to note that the company that we work with, Palette Shelter, it's actually owned and led by those that formerly experienced homelessness. And so they say that they lead and design with dignity in mind when it comes to building these structures. And so I'm very glad that our city staff partnered with an organization that truly understands that. So the work really continues in terms of addressing some of the different facets, but we can't do it alone. And that's something I want to reiterate. We're doing our part. We are trying to look at ways in which we can improve some of the maybe the litter that we see after meal sharing. Looking at ways in which we can advocate to the state house in terms of getting more funding for that one stop shop. Looking at ways in which our programs are federally funded. And is there an opportunity for maybe the city of Columbia to get a specific allocation from HUD to support the work that we do? And so while that work is ongoing, I just hope that you all see and understand that this is a larger issue that through our work we're hopefully raising the awareness and the need for accountability and collaboration when it comes to all of the different groups that are working to try and address this problem. I totally agree. And speaking of complex conversations, it's a complex issue. And I always say, if anyone says, if we just do this, then they don't understand the complexity of the issues. And I wanna commend, like you said, the crew from Elmwood Park because we just met last night. And the city has been reluctant, I think I can say, to be really hands on involved in the homeless issue. And this is our first time really taking the reins on because it is a complicated issue. But what I do like about, because we have done this, then Camisha and the residents at Elmwood Park could have a real dialogue last night. And it's a dialogue, it's a discussion where we get suggestions and input from the neighbors who are really being impacted by it. So I think one of the best things that has come out with it is that it is now a community conversation. The problem has gotten a little, I don't wanna call it the problem, but we're having to deal with it a little more. And so more people are now concerned and more people are involved in the dialogue. And to me, I think that's wonderful because more people understand that we cannot solve this by ourselves. I mean, we're bright, but we're not the brightest, right? And so I think, but we know that, we know that. And so we want the experts, we want the Camishas, we want the folks who know this business or this area so they can guide us through the process. So I don't wanna commend us, but I just wanna make note that we have tackled. And I think I said last night, you know, this is a hard issue. We tried, the city fought trying to get involved with homelessness, but we realized that we didn't do it. Who else is gonna do it? And so we know it's not gonna be easy. We hope that you all continue to work with us and Dr. Bussells and you know, Daniel, I'm sorry, Mayor Rickman came in. No, I mean, but when he first came in, that was one of the first things you did. You had a task force to figure out what are we gonna do with the homeless issue? And so I commend you for that as well, but we can't do nothing. And sometimes we get complaints one way or the other, but we can't sit back and do nothing. And so I do ask for everyone's patience and just to see how this goes trial and error. And Daniel, I don't know why I like calling you a serial. Because you're not me doing all. Yeah, but what he knows is you try something and if it doesn't work, you learn from it and then you try something else. And I think that we're fully prepared to do that. And I would just add one short thing is some of the wins that we've seen are not monetary, right? Sometimes you can throw as much money as you want to a problem, it's still not gonna solve the problem. So one example I'll give you is as a result of the task force, the Richland Library convened a kind of follow up and brought a lot of the providers that work with different populations within the unsheltered population or homeless population together. And they had some, I think they had to come to Jesus moment where they realized we're not collaborating, we're all doing our own little thing and our own little piece of the puzzle, right? And we're not talking to each other. And I give that credit of that conversation and the realization to the city getting involved in this work and helping people recognize that sometimes we can just keep things status quo and get too comfortable and not realize that things are working. And so some of those things are happening as well. And so I always try to look for those small wins along the way as we're trying to address this problem. Thank you all both for being part of it because it takes all of us and we've had to make some tough stands. And there's gonna be a point where we're gonna continue to have to reach out to you or our community to help support us as we make some changes, some changes to try something different because what we're doing or what's been going on, it's not working and we're seeing that. And we've got to be innovative. We got to try, but we got to make sure that what we're doing is taking care of the unsheltered and providing the quality of life for each one of our residents and our businesses. It is a two-way street. It's not one way. It's a two-way. And that's been a little bit of a challenge for us to be quite honestly. There's been some folks who think it's only one way and it really has to be two ways because at the end of the day we're responsible to make sure that we take care of human lives. What I don't ever wanna see happen again is what happened the other winter where we had somebody freeze to death because they were outside. And the worst part of it is is they had an opportunity to stay in a hotel and they wouldn't take it. There was no mechanism to get them to take it. They had some challenges mentally. And they found it in a parking lot in our community. That's not who we are. So as we continue to do this, we're thinking really through and then collaborating with experts. If it's the hospital systems we're talking to other cities, just was at the U.S. Conference of Mayors for the leadership meeting. And I saw what San Diego was doing. I talked to the mayor in his hungless goo. I talked to three other cities, Mayor Bass was there and talking about the challenge that they had to get folks into a hotel to get them off the street but a way for them to get, it was one step for them to be able to try to get people service and the help that they need to get off the streets and have an opportunity to have quality of life. Now granted, there are folks out there who don't want any of that but we also can't allow them to endanger themselves by being out. So it's a challenge and we're gonna continue to look for that solution. Obviously, you know, we've been working on greenways forever. I feel like we've been talking about greenways and I know we're working on a connectivity point through Elmwood Park that we've been working with and your legislator and maybe a few loud residents here have really been pushing which I think it's a great opportunity for us to create that connectivity. I will tell you that with the William Street extension we're gonna have an opportunity to really have not only the commercial side on UG but open up that whole riverfront that really has not been accessible. Create some more opportunities for people to enjoy the riverfront being an opportunity for have a place where you can kayak connect but that will be another connected point. I think the most thing I'm really excited about is the partnerships that we're doing and so we had an opportunity to work with Dominion Energy. Now for the next 100 years we have access to about over 200 acres down the river that allows us to go above Candy Lane all the way up to Solutus Shoals and once the malfunction juncture, I don't, what are we calling a new one? It's got a new name now. I'm still gonna call it malfunction junction. Function junction, function junction, function junction. But Caroline Crossroads, thank you, thank you. So, but now the Mungo Foundation and others have been working so now we'll be able to get from the dam all the way down. So think about this, when all of this is completed, the connectivity, you'll be able to go, if you were a visitor you could be at the convention center and walk or take a bike and never touch a road and go all the way to the zoo, up to the dam, back to Elmwood, cross over the street and go to Warmouth or into Coffee or Curious or Curiosity, I always say Curious because I remember reading Curious George as a kid. Didn't like the big yellow hat, but I like the story. But the connectivity there and as we're continuing to go after grants but making those connectivity points with our canal plant growth, we're gonna have an opportunity there to have another connected point with our alternative water source. So these are all things that we're excited about. Obviously we're gonna continue to get those river point and part of that 200 acres is to get more places for us to enjoy that river kayaking. Maybe it's a hammock park that's out there. More access for people to get there having not walking trail but maybe a biking trail. You hear so much about these other communities that have these trails that are connected both for mountain biking and for walking. So why can't we have that? We've got probably the most pristine water in the Southeast and there's not another river in the Southeast that has Spanish moss and Class II rapids. So let's figure out how to use that to our advantage. Get more people staying in hotels spending more money in our restaurants and our retail supporting our small businesses through tourism. We know they wanna come here. Let's get them to stay. Obviously we continue to invest in our public works. I don't see Mr. Anderson here but excited about what they continue to do. We've had several challenges and we continue to get over that by increasing buying new equipment, giving our employees better quality equipment to work with, giving them autonomy on how they do their job to make sure that they have the ability to do it. Our animals shelter received $100,000 grant best friends grant to continue efforts towards and no kill sent. This has been a hard thing for us and we're gonna continue to invest in there and do that. And as you know, we contract with the county so it's not just the city we take care of the whole county. We're looking at innovative ways to work with suggestions that came from other adoption agencies and from activists in our community how they could come together and help us deal with change maybe some of our ordinances and so forth to really help us get to that point where we're really getting down more fostering. One of the things we wanna invest in is moving our animal shelter into more of a retail place so that people are more apt to go there and even if they're just fostering and helping us it keeps an animal alive. Then obviously Spain New to program we really gotta work on that. And I think we've seen some aftermath from COVID and having to deal with that. And then obviously some of the unfortunate things that happened with fighting dogs and so forth that you've seen on the news obviously doing everything we can to improve those fines so that people really think twice before they get into that. Our forestry division continues to plant 500 trees. We're investing in our tree canopy. It's important for us to get that heat reduction down. As you know, we're about 18 1 1⁄2% heat advisory above others from that, looking at innovative ways that we can figure out how to do trees. One of the things we're gonna try with a pilot with Dominion is there's some other communities that are putting grates, they build bamboo grates and they put them over the spruce trees and maple trees which cause the branches to grow out long way so you still get the canopy but doesn't grow up so that we don't have to chop them in half from all the power lines that we have. So trying to find a balance between making sure we got power to everybody but also the beauty and full canopy of a tree. So trying different things and obviously for 43 years in a row we've been the tree city USA. Really excited about this. We're the only gold city in the state of South Carolina lead certified. We actually are invited to go to Washington to present. I think that says something because this push for lead certified not only came from the leadership of the city but it came from our CPAC and from our employees all working together. And I think it's a testimony to our commitment to the environment as well that we're gonna continue to do things. Our goal is to be platinum and we're gonna continue to do that. Obviously we're continuing to work on railway modernization as we've talked about for a long time. So in 1905 there was a book called Modernization of Columbia and it talked about several things at Central Park which we're redoing now Finley Park and it talked about realigning the rail. We've gotten $40 million from the state so far. We are applying for the mega and info with full support and this would be the first project that we've ever submitted to the federal government where the entire congressional delegation signed on. And I'm talking about everybody in the entire state with Congressman Clyburn and Senator Graham getting on a conference call and pleading our case, not only to the White House on our behalf but to the Secretary on our behalf of how important this is because the realignment opens up our community downtown. It changes it, it opens up the whole way of bringing safety. Right now we got cut off. There are times where we got entire community cut off from our officers from our fire department. We're working to change that but it also eliminates 15 crossings and part of that is our quiet zone project which will go along with that which will allow us to stretch through our city to upgrade the safety requirements around our crossings so that they don't have to haunt the horn coming through but we also prevent people or cars from getting in a situation that turns bad. And I'll tell you why that's important. We're one of the few cities, I think we're the only city in South Carolina that's got over 60 crossings in it. But because of all the automotive that we have from the upstate to the low country going to the port we've seen an increase of 47, excuse me, 47% of rail traffic. Well, guess who feels that? We do. None of those cars are stopping. We're not getting a paycheck for that. We're the drive through. So everything that we can do to shift some of that out of our daily lives is gonna be a critical piece. Obviously, we provide basic service driving these community improvement projects and we're still doing it. I'm proud of what we've gotten going. We're not done yet. This council has more energy and our staff has more energy. And I will tell you, I think we've taken on so many projects and we're gonna continue to do that but finishing some of these old long projects, focusing on new and continuing to invest in the city first that means into our infrastructure, into our staff, into our equipment needs, into our parks, into our water system. We're gonna continue to do everything we can to make sure that we're doing what's best for the community and the quality of life first and foremost. And that takes time. We can't hit everything at one time but it's also gonna take us innovative. We gotta be creative and leverage. And that's why we hired a whole bunch of folks to help us go after these federal grants. Next piece, obviously, communities and neighborhoods. $24 million revitalization of our center park which is a big, big deal. Finlay Park is the center of our community and as downtown living is growing and being part of that but what's gonna make it different? And we're having a groundbreaking this week and somebody said, well, it's just gonna go back to being disregarded, no, it's not. We are gonna have park rangers there. We're gonna have maintenance crews. If you look at the quality of our parks, the parks that are manned on a day to day by our great staff from Parks and Recs are the parks where you see the most people. So we're taking exactly what we do if it's Hyatt Park, Greenview or wherever, doing the same thing in Finlay Park and putting those bodies in there to make sure that if you're a resident or a visitor, you have a great experience having the outdoor. We've applied for four additional grants to go after outdoor exercising and that would be one in each district which would be our goal which just creates a platform and it has a whole series of exercises that you can do out in the outdoors and enjoy our quality of life, our beautiful community. The Bell Field, we heard resounding in neighborhood we need a place where if I wanna start a non-profit or I wanna incubate my business, I need a place to go. I need a place that I can get help and the best way for us to do that was take advantage of a bad situation where we had a flooding at the Bell Field Center in the library. We took that insurance money and now we put in cubicles. We have two conference rooms with TVs. We got printers and copiers in there where people can come and hook up with free wifi and that's our contribution and you can sign up and be part of that and you have an opportunity to be there for a year so you have an opportunity to grow your idea and your small business or whatever but right there in the back of your neighborhood and I hope this is the first of many that we do across the city but this was our pilot because we saw the opportunity to take advantage of a flooding and really turn it in something that could make a difference. Obviously we continue to do partnerships. Walmart has come through with the police department and their petal initiative, give away 50 bikes two years in a row to kids who were on the honor roll, who made that at each and worked with the elementary schools and I tell you, it's one of the greatest things to go and see a kid who may not have had a bike before learn how to ride, put that helmet on and have an opportunity to be outside and enjoy our community all provided by partnerships. Obviously sports clinics over 500 youth have been worked along with our parks and recs and the under armor. We have over 1400 kids participate in the summer camps. If you saw our guideline this summer, we had a three page folder with just, I mean, everything from arts to sports, we were, we put a stake in the ground and we have been part of trying to give people an opportunity to have a place to go and do something constructive and learn. We're also, we did a youth program through a private grant where we paid kids to help clean up a neighborhood. Bless you. We, to clean up a neighborhood and I'm hoping that could turn into a longterm program where we can hire youth and pay them to make a difference in their own community where, and then they can learn part of that can save some money, spend some money but there is alternatives out there. Obviously, you know, we continue to house after school programs, 75 kids per week in five parks. And then, you know, I mean, our senior programs are pretty strong. I think we're at least, I know over 400 seniors participating constantly and I hope we can grow that. Did y'all want to add anything? No, I just wanted to make sure people understood too so that I heard you say concerns about family park we're gonna fix it up and then it's gonna fall again. I remember coming back to South Carolina and working at the courthouse and I could go and eat lunch because I didn't have any money back. I don't have money now really too but I mean, no, but I would bring my lunch and I would go and have lunch at the park, family park every day or several days a week and then I also remember what I couldn't do that anymore but Mirricamin has also been very adamant about making sure we have the funding to maintain anything that we build. Now it's a hard and those are hard discussions because we have areas that want new parts and new things added. But honestly, we do have to make sure that we're budgeting to maintain the things that we currently have. And so those are hard discussions that we have because we have to tell some people no and some people yes, but it's what we have to do and that's why we're in this role but I do wanna emphasize that that is one of the things that Mirricamin has always been adamant about is making sure we have the money in the budget to maintain all of the things that we do have and that they don't fall and disarray and then with respect to Bellefield just realizing there may be people in here great ideas but no idea where to start. Don't have the capacity, don't have the equipment at home and that just opens up the door for a lot of people who just have great ideas to bring those to life. And so I just, I wanna make sure that they, and that was, and a lot of these things, so let me tell you what Mirricamin is not saying. A lot of the stuff is just his idea, okay? And he's saying we, right? But I think it is important for folks to know some of the things that he spearheaded, so, and I'm not trying to make, I'm not trying to really get it. But I just wanna make sure we know these things but I think it's not always clear to everyone else. It takes all of us and all of us have worked together and I think it's so important that we continue to be there. I appreciate the kind words but it really is all of us working together and I think that's what's been so exciting about the last 18 months. Obviously we talked a little bit about Love Your Block, 12 neighborhoods were giving up recipients of grants this year. Community Block grant money, 130 units, 20 homes repaired this year. I mean, we're there next week, towards the end of the week we're gonna do the Columbia Art Streams Initiative, announcing increase in public funding in the city. But part of that's also bringing some libraries, some libraries into our communities, a traveling art program on campus that will go through every district. So it's not just here and it'll be moving around and then our fish art project, to put pride and some thought around the river but that being all those being auctioned off and that money going into a fund so that people can apply for grants to do more art in our community. Obviously, we have a relationship with the Boyd Foundation who is investing millions in our community folks and if you don't know who the Boyd Foundation is, it's a family here in town and this is Boyd, Susan Boyd is the matriarch of that family. They're spending about $7 million a year in our community. They're funding the bridge connectivity in our greenways. They did the greenhouse addition at Hampton. They put a million dollars into one of the incubators for innovation to really help it going. They're a major player on what's gonna happen on the riverfront and its park but they made a commitment to their hometown city. They're putting Boyd Island together with outdoor art and the connectivity. This is all being funded by them. They just finished paying for all of the renovations at the aquarium at the zoo. This family is committed to our community and so if you ever run into them, tell them thank you but they're continuing to do that and I think that's a great program. Obviously talking about programs, the Shine program where we've been repairing elderly and disadvantaged homes. We had a program out there and we have really made a huge dent. We're gonna continue to search for more funding to keep projects like that going and leveraging the federal grants and we talked about hiring people to help us with grants, that's why. There's so much federal money out there but it's not formula-based, it's application-based so we've gotta go actively to get it and some of it we gotta get creative on how we do it so we're gonna continue to do that. Obviously, food insecurity, it's on everybody's mind we've been talking about it and we've funded out one of the committee's programs to fund a mobile cart unit out there. We're gonna try something innovative with Instacart. Instacart and I are partnering up to do free delivery to folks and we're gonna do a pilot program here and if it works it could turn into a national model which is very exciting. They have been talking about this and in October we're gonna have a big announcement about the program. We put some seed money up but they're bringing a lot of money and innovation and support behind this so that we can try to make an impact. In the short term, we can get the grocery stores in the areas need and it's not an easy task. I know a lot of people have said, hey, y'all could just build the building and give it to them. Well, we did that, it saved a lot on Hardham Street. Today it's empty. And whatever we do in that instant we have to make sure that we can support it and it stands because when that time comes, if we fail, the chances of getting it, another one is gonna be very slim and I say that because we gotta build up density. That's why we wanna build houses back in our neighborhoods and get density growing up. We've two wallmarks of clothes in our community that tells you that the market is very delicate here. And I've heard that and believe me, we're trying every chance we get to do what we can out there but we're gonna have to try some innovative things in between and if there's a delivery service let's take advantage of it. Let's see if that can make a difference between somebody having to take a bus, two buses to get food, depending on somebody else to get there so that they can make sure they're getting whatever they need from them at no extra cost to them, just what it is. So we're gonna continue that pilot looking forward to that in October. And then obviously the Tom's Creek project we talked about the trailer, that deal has been done and you wanna add something, you're a big, big part of making sure that all happened. Well, we got a presentation today and I'm even more excited now because I learned last night that they also have a grocery store downtown. I think it's 912 Lady Street. And so in them picking that location, we're looking at them being able to get the food from right there. One of the big things with smaller folks is how do you handle the margins? Because it's really hard to open a grocery store so the city staff has done a great job in picking a company that's sustainable, that's been in the market for a while. They know what they're doing and they're getting food from local farmers that they're already working with. So I think y'all are gonna be super excited when it comes out. Yeah, and you know, we talked about investing in our communities and the business and everything but we're also empowering our city workforce and we talked about it a little bit but market salary adjustments were very important for everybody, not just our sworn officers, not just for our fire department but for everybody who works and continuing in leadership development, working along with the city manager to really create a program where we can have an opportunity for our future leaders to grow up in our system here in Columbia. Technology, we're working on technology and upgrading, making it easier for you to get information, easier for us to get information to you and easier for us to get back to you in an timely manner so that we make sure that we're answering problems in a very short window instead of it taking longer for us to respond. Obviously, we made a big push to consolidate our offices. We're going down, we're gonna put 17 properties downtown Columbia back on the tax rolls and we're consolidating our employees into offices so that they can then work closer together but also bring a more sense of community but also we don't need all this space, we don't need to have all these, let's get put money back on the tax rolls or if we have an opportunity to use that particular piece of property for an economic development project, housing, workforce housing or a new company to attract them, we'll do that but our goal is to get those back out into the market, bring our folks in house. Then obviously I'm gonna roll through the third piece because I know you'll wanna talk about district one which is economic development and I'll tell you I'm so pleased at what our staff has done, what our planning department and the city as a whole has done, we've got close to $600 million worth of investment through if it's houses, multifamily houses, the commercial developments obviously trade and other developments but advancing and growing all of our hospitality districts but what's interesting about that is that we already know there are five more hotels gonna be built here. We've got a whole block of Elmwood getting ready to be redone with the owners already looking to buy more property in that corridor to bring more housing and every time I meet with this group I get really excited about what they're bringing because they're being very innovative and thoughtful in how they can do things during the construction phase to create some fun if it's food truck or concerts in the construction or things to try to engage the community as they're building but they are very excited about the opportunity. We have two more projects that are coming out of the ground that are 125 and $135 million worth of housing downtown. That's what we need for our density to build it back up and then obviously our Bull Street district is continuing to grow. It is really going and talk to Robert Hughes quite a bit, very excited about some of the things he's bringing. We went to meet with a group that's bringing a food hall which is gonna be exciting but what's really cool about it they're not just gonna bring a food hall they're gonna bring a retail component where they'll have pop-up retail. So it gives an opportunity for someone A to try without a big or long-term investment to have a retail presence. And you're seeing it nationwide around a lot of places and so it's exciting that we'll have a place that we can try that out. Saw it in Nashville and it was very a lot of big retailers. There's gonna be another group coming in that's gonna have 60 booths of designers and we're talking about a high dollar, I shouldn't say high dollar but very well-known design groups who wanna show them here they're not ready to build bricks and mortar but it gives us access to things that are in other communities that we should have here and it gives us a way to show them that we support businesses and I think that's what's exciting. And then obviously scout loaders come and that impacts us tremendously. Those folks will be living in our community but I think what was so exciting for me about the conversation with Scout was I talked to the mayor of Chattanooga and I said, VW has been there now. Tell me about the experience and he said they're incredible partners in your community. Not only do the folks live, eat and spend money in the community they support cultural events. They're engaged, they don't just stay in the plant they're at the art museum, their kids are playing sports, they're investing. So when they come and I had other Ted that he gave me which was very interesting he said, if you look at VW's history they've never closed a plant and their entire history is a company. Wow. So that shows of the commitment they make and so I think this is gonna be an exciting thing for our community not only from the job and economic but the exposure that we're gonna get is a community from that. Obviously office of business opportunity our economic work helping not only our small existing and new businesses but the relationships that we're meeting as well. So it was in Washington meeting at the White House and with small business administration and there's a couple of new programs that we're gonna bring to Columbia and some opportunity, some funding that we'll be able to work with our OBO office to bring and make sure that we can help our small businesses in here get the funding they need to continue to grow, expand and some even survive through a program that will help those small businesses get through. So we're excited about those continuing conversations. Obviously we're continuing to work with our business retention programs, our revolving loan, $720,000 that we have and we've talked about the new hotels. It's just a snapshot of what we've done so far in that economic development and anybody has questions around that we can talk about it. And then obviously I think district one. So district one and I think three areas in district one we want to talk about and kind of thing is one is public service obviously the major water projects that we're doing. Water upgrades and river view terrace subdivision that was $1.3 million. Sees work coordinate with DOT to complete the construction plan of the resurfacing streets, neighborhoods, we're gonna continue to work with them very hard on doing it. One of our plans is as you know 72% of the roads in Columbia are owned by DOT is continue to find money to maintain, get more sidewalks, get more walkability in the community. With what we've seen at the state house we're continuing to apply for more money but working with DOT through leveraging some programs to build back America but also to build America bureau that may be an opportunity for us to look at this infrastructure in long term and may even be pinning money down the road. Obviously Killian Creek, 5.2 million as part of the wastewater capacity insurance program. The project upsizes sanitary sewer, 5,000 linear feet, 24 inch new and that goes all the way to harvest and to piney grove and that hopes to be done by summer of 24. Harlem Heights storm drainage, 6.6 million continuing to do that and I have to say this note and I made him put a thing in. Senator Scott was a big reason why that happened. He was a big advocate for that project and it was a sad phone call to get from somebody who was an advocate for our city and especially at the state house he fought but if it wasn't for him. Obviously we're getting new landscaping if you notice on Elmwood. We've cut down a lot of the bushes and so forth put low new land. Part of that is to deter people from hanging out in the bushes but also make the appearance stronger. We've expanded the yellow shirt program to tend that corridor. We're working on something now for part of the main to help make sure that we can help support the businesses and the community here with every bit we have not just our public safety in our public works but some added partnerships where we can add that extra hand or that footprint there. Obviously we continue with new plants and curb appeal, street division, we're working on the bike lane additions over on Calhoun. Obviously we're working with Elmwood and through what came out of the clear dot discussions working on some of the test sites to slow down the traffic. We hope that we can continue to push the slow traffic down in our neighborhoods through DOT has come like almost 180 degrees different from where they are from allowing us to try even art on asphalt and some other things. We are looking at the Main Street corridor to trial, to streamline and slow down the traffic, move it down so that if we can continue to flow a traffic there, then we can put bump outs, some parking there on the road and what it will do is really allow us to push the growth of those empty parking lots and lots on Main Street filled with businesses so that you're getting an opportunity for everybody to connect. We bring institutional investors here to look and one of the things they keep telling us is you got to get the connectivity. Why do you have four lanes everywhere? That's not what people do today and downtown Decatur just went through this four years ago. You got to see all the small businesses and the connectivity. So we've talked to the representative for the area and we're going to try this project. It may not look great at first so please bear with us. They put these little pops but the point is trying to get traffic to slow down so that we can get the growth that we want to see. Do you want to add something? No, I just wanted to make sure folks, the emphasis on safety and beautification. I think one of the things that we recognize coming in, I guess because we all came when you were still there but one of the new things that we really knew we had to address was the cleanliness of the city. And I don't know exactly, I don't know if it was due to COVID or not but we realized that we just had a lot more trash everywhere and so making sure that there was an emphasis city-wide on all of the main corridors to have them up kept. One thing too, when folks are looking and where they want to go, they're going to look at the community and how we're maintaining it. And so I appreciate the emphasis on beautification and especially safety. You know, obviously phase two of Hyatt Park, renovation of the baseball field, $350,000 being for that. Obviously the courts that were upgraded part of Asia Wilson did renovating of the existing courts. We're doing some, getting a new air conditioning. I know somebody's here from Hyatt Park and they know the air conditioning down. We're working on getting that fixed in New Park but that park has had tremendous amount of investment over the year, really looks great. Greenview, we're putting $700,000 out into there, adding trails, upgrading the courts. That's one of our busiest tennis centers in the city is at Greenview, adding some landscaping so it's more attractive for those folks who are coming in to play in those tournaments to see but adding some camera systems there for safety, upgrading the bathrooms in there so that it really is a representative of our community. Randall Avenue Park Development Grant of $252,000 which is exciting because that's where we're also building homes and we've been very excited. It's been a long process to get there but we'll have 12 new homes and that'll be a start. Baseball field upgrades here, that's another 300 there. Obviously, everybody's excited about the return of the cornbread other than a little bit of rain but it was still fun. I still ate too much. I'm still mad, I didn't win a prize for my cornbread that I submitted. It was good. I still thought it was good. It was very good. Clearly, the judges did and then obviously our biggest plan is that we're going after a choice neighborhood grant. The old East Central Plan, some of y'all were involved in that in 2004. It's been sitting on a shelf for almost two decades. It is still relevant today and we're gonna use that to catapult. We're getting, we have to apply, we thought we could bypass, I'm gonna be honest with you, I thought we could bypass the planning grant and focus on the grant since we had this great plan but the federal government says that's not the way they operate. So we're going after the planning grant. We're gonna take all this information, all this hard work that our neighborhoods, our staff and everybody did and put it in for a choice neighborhood grant. We're going after 35 million and why that's important is that we could leverage that money in the private sector then and really, you're talking about possibly four times that amount of money being leveraged and spent in 2009, 2003 to really address issues from I-20 to Elmwood. And that's those neighborhood nodes of corridors, getting new sidewalks, creating opportunities for small businesses and more family. Because one of the things we need is we need Coggeplex's townhomes as well, a single family. We need a flethora of investment so that we can grow the community. This is where we lost our biggest population over the last decade was in 2009, 2003. So we have an opportunity to change that with these type of grants and leveraging what we've learned and how to go after that. And it doesn't hurt that we have a friend in the White House these days. So thanks, Mayor Benjamin, for constantly taking our call and helping us where we can because it does help. I'm gonna tell you. Obviously, you know, our investments in NOMA and the things that we continue to do, the partnerships with the new groups. Obviously, I mean, when I ride down here and you see what's going on with the businesses across from Cromers and next to the Trestle Building, that's the kind of stuff that I wanna see more of. I think what they're doing there is not only attractive, I heard they're fully leased already. That's what I heard from somebody. So, I mean, that's incredible. That's what we need to continue to foster and that's what we can do together as we continue to move there. Obviously, you know, paint and sip is open up. We're all anticipating, you know, peak drift opening up. That's a big deal. I just had heard the other day they just signed a contract to produce beer for another company that really will maximize the growth out there, which is incredible. That means more jobs. And then as that opens up, that's another seed that's gonna close these gaps that we've been trying to do for decades. Obviously, you know, we can, 220 Main Street, $49 million, $250 apartments. I don't know if you've met your new neighbor from Midlands Media. They're some of the nicest people. They own Kix, the dude, I'm sorry, it used to be called Kix, it's the dude now, but they also have Kola Daily. They're incredible people. If you haven't had a chance to meet them, goodbye and knock on their door. They're gonna be great neighbors and they're gonna support each and every one of you very well and they're a good advocate. And then obviously EPC Inc. with 9.5 million investment, 150 jobs. No, I'm just excited to see things coming. And, you know, the city started with the city center and we truly are seeing that work slowly work its way down the corridor. But I also like, so we have these plans, I always complain that we have all these plans and we spent all this money, but the plans don't come with the money to implement. I mean, they just don't. And so being able to go back and implement some of the East Central City partnership that I'm playing has been critical. It may have taken many, many years, but I like the fact that we've been able to go back and fund some of those projects and doing infield with single family homes and increasing home ownership opportunities for folks who may not otherwise been able to buy a house. So I think it's crucial and I think it's gonna really impact the neighborhoods and the communities. And there are more projects coming. People are looking every day. And in our economic development team, we have been visiting cities and meeting with restaurant owners and retail owners and investors. But going to meet and see their projects so we can understand, as y'all know, when we get apartment complexes and so forth then, we wanna know that the management team understands what we expect. We expect it to be a well maintained and part of our community. And that's what we've been doing is almost vetting people before we show them all the opportunities here. And we had some incredible visits in Atlanta and Charleston and Greenville and Charlotte and learn some things in Charlotte where they've created some affordable housing models that are sustainable and they do it with corporate partners. And they have what they call a good real profit margin but they build a system so that it's not, everything's not driven by tax credit. So they're really investing in a unit and making it stable and sustainable. And they've done seven projects in that market so far. But that's the kind of relationships we're trying to build is take the knowledge where people are doing good, sustainable projects. They're community oriented and bringing those folks here to be part of our community. So, we've talked about a number of investments in district one. This is just the beginning, it's just the surface. And we're gonna continue to work on everything from our lighting upgrades that are going, if you haven't seen them, all of our lights are turning to LED. So that's gonna be brighter and safer for some of our neighborhoods now. As some people say, they don't like it bright but I think the more we can do deter the conversations that we're having, the information that we get from our district reps and are at large, but also our staff. I went and looked at a ditch today that somebody I haven't an issue with. How do we make sure that these things are getting done and we get the appropriate folks to do it? And we're doing some things we probably shouldn't be doing because it's DOT property or whatever. We wanna make sure that we do everything to maintain your quality of life. But so we've talked about a lot of the pieces of the puzzle on our end. Well, look under your chair. There's a piece of the puzzle there. So for us to be a whole community, you gotta be part of that piece of the puzzle. So that means you gotta tell us what we're doing right. You gotta tell us what we're doing wrong. You need to put your input. You need to be an advocate for your neighbors, your business and be part of the puzzle. We're all trying to be part of the puzzle. And I wish I could say I came up with this idea. I actually took it from my minister. But she did such an incredible job talking about this that I said, you know, that really describes who we are as a community because all the puzzle pieces have different shapes and sizes and it takes all of us to complete it. And I don't know a better way to describe who we are as a city is a giant puzzle. And everybody has a piece and we're gonna keep going that. You know, Columbia, we try to say the words, you know, open for business, but the reality is we're open for innovation, we're open for ideas, we're open for input and we're very open for criticism. Because we gotta know what's right and what's wrong and what affects people and different. We're not living in your shoes. And so please keep that dialogue. You know, challenge all the stay engaged, challenge all the share ideas. You know, I want our community to be as strong as ever. I've never, I've been in Columbia 35 years and I just feel like that when I go around in our community now, I just feel like people, I don't hear so much negative I used to hear. I hear a lot of positive people want our community to be who we can be. I just see with the investment, I see with people making a decision to live here. You know, seven out of 10 people who are retiring from Fort Jackson are now choosing our community as their own. Seven out of 10, that's what the general told me the other night, seven out of 10. That's a testament. But we gotta maintain the character that we have along with embracing investment and new. And there's a way to do it. Look, there are other places been doing it for hundreds of years, we can do it. So let's work together. I do, we did ask people to submit some questions and I know some folks didn't. We do have cards here. I wanna remind everybody if something came up you wanna ask more detailed question or something we didn't talk about, please submit it, we'll get it back to you. But I did wanna hit a couple of ones that came in. Megan from district one asked what the status of the new transfer station at Lucius Road is. We're waiting on the board to update us when they're gonna open that up. But it's supposed to be here soon. So we're gonna put that information out as soon as we get it. I was hoping I could get it before tonight but I didn't get it, did you know it? Yes. Answer right there. He's on the board. No, they were trying to have it done this year. Looks like it's gonna be January. I don't know if y'all have noticed but the contractor, they had some great, honestly they had some grading issues and so when they started trying to do the initial drive-throughs they realized they needed to change them. The good thing is, yeah, because someone mentioned it on Facebook, whether or not the taxpayers were having to pay for that problem but no, because the specs and everything were correct. The contractor is going back and looking at the grading so it is gonna add a little more time before we're able to fully implement getting that up and running. So next year, January. Thank you. Hope, finally. I think one of the things that we also heard, Mark G from District One, are there any plans to rectify the situation out of the gateway? And that's one of the things that Elmwood Gateway we're working on, not only creating a better entranceway coming in, obviously we're gonna have some Elmwood work going on there at the bridge here soon but as that all, that's why you see the planings we've done, we're continuing to do that. We've added some yellow shirt help to help clean up. We've been talking to some of the local businesses there as well about helping us deal with some of the loitering and other things that have gotten a lot of the trash and really clean up and brighten up. We've talked to the state about removing a lot of these excess signs there too. I don't know if you've read them on Bull Street but I mean, at one time there were seven signs directing you to the state museum and to the art museum and we got these beautiful new signs there but we still had the others but changing those out and I know Dr. Bussells has been working with our staff, MLBG and others about a nice gateway sign. So when you come in on I-26, you actually feel welcomed to our community and obviously Elmwood is a big part of that. Yeah, we saw some preliminary renderings of those designs today and it's more than just a sign. I think it goes back to some of our strategic priorities that come from you all which is that if you build a place that people want to be, more people will come and when we make some of these changes it makes you feel more welcome and more pride for your city and that was one of the things that I noticed when I decided to be crazy and run for office was that there were a lot of folks that felt like Columbia was put in the real mirror and wasn't that destination that it deserves to be and so that's what you're really seeing with our investment in public works and in our gateway. So yes, we will have some signage in the District 1 corridor, North Main corridor as well as some of our major highway gateways into the city. We had another question that was around beautification and how people could get involved. What's our plan? Our plan is obviously to continue and upgrade, do more plantings, more trees, more low cover but also engaging and working more, there used to be adopt a block and adopt a highway and others but getting more because we're getting more business community asking how can we invest cleaning up, planning but doing things that are sustainable. Other cities are doing plantings and different things that help not only deter trash from collecting because of the way thing that our year round beauty. So looking at what other communities are doing and adding to that but engaging. We've got a lot of garden clubs who have approached us who wanna take on some significant intersections in the coming year and make that their project. So engaging and continuing. So part of it is our funding, part of it is gonna be partnerships and collaborative efforts. We have gotten with DOT on, we started with, we have nine different gateways in our community. We started with the first one which was a project this summer of cleaning up UG Street and Gervais Street getting them to restrike, getting, it's terrible when you got a tomato plant growing up in the middle of the intersection and every day you drive by and watch the tomato grow more. DOT, so that's the kind of stuff that we wanna address because I don't care if you're coming in on Farrell Road, North Main, Monticella or UG, there shouldn't be weeds this tall growing in our sidewalks in our main. So working with them to get the gateways and then we're gonna go after all the roads with them because they do control the majority of our roads but that's what we're working there. And then Mimi has one of her questions she sent several so I'll take one of them right now is what strategies are you using to attract and retain all ages in Columbia? We're actually telling people about Columbia. We are marketing, city manager helped us get a new marketing firm to go out and actually sell. We're, I have every college in this city represented meeting with me on a monthly basis to talk about how we retain the talent. And what we learned from them is that the young folks wanna live downtown, they're not interested in buying a home, they wanna walk to work, they wanna walk to entertainment but they also didn't know all the opportunities that were available for them in our community. Obviously the military is a big recruitment because they're right here and they're coming. The other thing is taking, we have 53 lots that we own in the city that have been empty for two decades. We're taking those lots and building homes to attract people to move back downtown. When we're going to some, we know where people have moved to other parts of the county and we're trying to track them back downtown to be part of our neighborhoods. So retaining is just showing people that we're making the investment but also telling our story. We're gonna have a TV show that's coming here in October to film Columbia. And when I met with the producer of the show, he said, well, the staff wasn't really thrilled about Columbia at first because they just thought we were just a college town. They had no idea the assets and we sent them just gobs of information, videos and showing them. They were blown away what we have and the comment was pretty funny. He said to me, why don't y'all tell anybody? I said, I don't know. I think for years we're trying to keep it a secret but now we're telling people so that we can make sure that we keep it. We have over 60,000 students here who are future workforce. We're getting ready to have an influx of people who are probably gonna come here along with the folks that are here to join Scout in some of the ancillary businesses. That's how Greenville grew. That's how other places are gonna have grown is those folks coming. And when they come here, what do they wanna do? They wanna stay. I'm a prime example of that. 35 years ago, I had no desire to stay in Columbia. I'd been here for four years for college. I was leaving. It took four extra months of staying here to realize that my friends were taking jobs here, that this is a place that supported small businesses and had an incredible lifestyle for anyone. We have all these assets. It's a beautiful city and I still believe that. And I think we just, it's our time to shine. With that, thank you all for coming. Thanks for being here. This is the first one of five. We're gonna continue to move around but I hope it'll encourage you to engage with us, stay in touch with us and be part of that puzzle. Thank you.