 So now we're starting out on a segment entitled Vibrant Portland, of course. And it's talking about our thriving downtown, our creative economy, and the role of tourism in our economy. And we're going to have all three of our speakers, and I'm just going to introduce them all right now, and let them flow one to the other. We have Casey Gilbert. Casey is down there. Yay. Okay. Executive Director of Portland Downtown. A comment that a vibrant downtown is essential to the city's economic health. I think she would agree probably on that one. And then we have Lynn Tillotson. Did I say it correctly? Yes. Oh, shoot. Thank heavens. A visit Portland. Portland has an international and domestic travel destination. And then we have Dinah Minot, who is the Executive Director of Creative Portland. It's a creative community. It's the fine arts, the music, everything, literary arts, graphic design, culinary arts. You can do the whole list on your own. That sustains and grows the creative economy. And there's been a lot of work done just in the last decade to specifically point that out and help the city grow with that. So I am going to turn it over to you all. And you each have 10 minutes. I'll start waving at you if you go over 10 minutes. And when you're all done, we'll go to Q&A. Thank you very much for being here today. Thank you. So it looks like I'm first on the agenda. As you said, I'm Casey Gilbert, Executive Director of Portland Downtown. And I'm going to talk a little bit about what Portland Downtown is and what we do to keep Portland vibrant. But I thought it would be fun first just to share a little bit about who I am. So you can get to know me a little bit. So I raised my hand in the beginning when they asked, you know, did you grow up in Maine? And I grew up in New Hampshire. So I'm a granite stator. I was born in Laconia and stayed there for most of my life until I graduated and went to the University of Vermont in Burlington, which is another beautifully vibrant city. Yeah, Burlington. So I went to UVM and my degree was Community Development and Applied Economics. So I think I knew I was going to be in downtown economic development before I even knew it. There was something in my heart that was always drawn to economics and downtown vitality. I did my graduate degree at Carnegie Mellon University, which is in Pittsburgh, but I've actually never been to Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon opened a satellite university in Australia. So I did my degree in Adelaide, and I have a master's in public policy and management. And then I'm actually, in addition to working full-time for Portland downtown, I'm doing my PhD program at the University of Southern Maine right now in public policy, so kind of sticking with the same vein. And I really fell in love with downtowns when I started volunteering with Main Street programs more than a decade ago. I started volunteering with Main Street programs in New Hampshire and then in Florida. And then I was lucky to land my dream job here in Portland. I not only love Portland, I eat, sleep, and breathe Portland. I do not work a 40-hour-a-week job. It is, you know, with me all the time. So I love Portland and I love my job, and I'm so excited to be here to talk with you about Portland today. I thought it would also be kind of fun just as a show of hands. So we rebranded. We used to be called Portland's Downtown District, which is quite a mouthful. So just by a show of hands, how many of you before today had heard of Portland's Downtown District or Portland Downtown? That's good. And with that show of hands, how many of you feel like you kind of know what Portland Downtown does? Okay, a few less hands. Okay. And then finally, how many of you know the term business improvement district? Is that something new? Okay, good. So we're going to demystify all of this today. So Portland Downtown is a 501C4 nonprofit business improvement district. And we're actually bound by a geography, and I brought my PowerPoint today. And it's on a phone core board. So can everybody see that over there? Okay, in here. So we're kind of bound by essentially commercial street and then Cumberland Avenue, which is right behind Congress Street, and then Franklin Arterial, and that way down there, that's Longfellow Square. And so that's kind of our boundaries. We were established in 1992, and Lynn, before the presentation, said, you know, you should kind of tell them why, you know, you came to existence. And I wasn't in Portland, of course, so a lot of what I'm telling you is anecdotal and historic information. But Downtown Portland was kind of, you know, hit by hard times. And Congress Street had a lot of storefront vacancies. The old port, as I've heard from stories, was not a place you wanted to be at night. And so business improvement districts a lot of time get formed because they need an entity that can come in and bring vitality to the downtown. They need people to get together and make a plan, a strategic plan for how they're going to spur economic development in a downtown. And so that's why Portland's Downtown District was formed in 1992. And I'm just going to tell you a little bit about the structure of the organization. So we have four full-time staff that work in the office. I'm the executive director. We have an office manager. We have a marketing and communications coordinator. And Amy Garan is here somewhere today. She is my downtown experience liaison. And then we employ five full-time public works crew to work on our clean and safe initiatives. So when you see people out keeping the streets clean, when you see the parking bans declared and all the snow magically gets trucked out of downtown, we're doing that and we're paying for that. The supplemental tax is levied on all the property owners within that district. So that's how we get funded. They get their typical tax bill from the city of Portland, and then they get an additional tax bill, a supplemental tax bill, and that goes to fund our nonprofit business improvement district. And when I say nonprofit, I mean we have a board of directors that represent the diverse mix of stakeholders in the community. So we have a residential representative on our board. We have a retail representative on our board. We have a nightlife representative on our board. So really hearing from the broad base of the constituency. And we all work together on a five-year strategic plan, which we're in the midst of right now. And I look out in the crowd and I see Matt Veeth, who is one of our board of directors from Machiah Savings Bank. So I can look out in the community and see people who are affecting change in our organization all the time. And that makes me really excited. So within our five-year strategic plan, Tuck kind of pointed out these six areas. We have four, which is vitality, experience, growth, and advocacy. And we work on goals underneath all of those strategic areas. And I think some of the things that we're most proud of that we've been working on with advocacy and Tuck and Bill both pointed to me earlier and said she can talk about parking and wayfinding. We collaborated with the city on a parking advocacy letter that was a list of recommendations. And one of those was that we needed to do a parking study for downtown in the waterfront. So we chipped in $15,000 to the parking study. And hopefully that report will be coming out soon, looking at the existing supply and demand of parking in downtown in the eastern waterfront, projecting and predicting future supply and demand and what we need to do to manage that supply and demand. So I think there was a question from the audience earlier around what are we doing to look at parking and transportation. So one of our advocacy issues was parking and another was sound. In a developing city, you're bringing in more residential development, but you also want a vibrant nightlife community and how do those two work together? We also did another advocacy letter around sound. And something that came from that is that we now have monthly public meetings at the city of Portland. The Sound Oversight Committee meets once a month and hears from the public about their concerns around sound in downtown. So we're really an advocacy organization. We're keeping downtown clean and safe, and we're also marketing it. During your lunch break, you can come over to our table and see the beautiful directory that we produce. A lot of people first come to know Portland downtown through our major events. Have you guys ever heard of the Oldport Festival or Mary Madness? Yes, we have to manage that behemoth of an event. Something that we inherited as an organization, but part of our strategic look at these events over the coming years is how can we make those events better work for our local community? I think with the Oldport Festival, it's something that's kind of grown out of control and we may not necessarily serve our local community the best way that it could, so we're going to be looking at that over the coming years. So I talked a little bit about our board, our staff, our public works crew. We have active committees, a strategic plan, and we also have strategic partnerships, and I'm sitting with some of those folks here today. So Lynn from Visit Portland, Dinah Minot from Creative Portland, and the city of Portland, we all work together on what's called the Stakeholders Committee. A lot of people talk about silos and we want to make sure that we break down those silos and a lot of people say, are you the chamber? Are you the convention and visitors bureau? Quincy is here from the chamber as well, another one of our strategic partners, and we all get together to make sure that we're not overlapping and stepping on each other's toes and that we're also working strategically together. So the city of Portland houses the Economic Development Stakeholders Committee and we all sit together and talk about what we're doing to make downtown vibrant. So I can say that from 1992 till now, that's 25 years that Portland downtown has been in existence. We've come from a downtown which had a super high vacancy rate in store fronts. Property values were down. There was not a lot of, you know, vibrancy happening here and with the help of our partners, the city, the convention and visitors bureau visit Portland and all these other organizations, you can see that we have this beautifully vibrant community. And I just came back from California for a conference and everybody I talked to out there was like, oh, you live in Portland, Maine? I love that place. You know, I vacation there, or my grandmother lives there, I go visitor in the summer, we honeymoon there, I bring our kids there. We are talked about not just nationally, but globally right now. We're on all the top 10 lists and the theme that I was speaking on at the conference and it'll be the theme of our downtown conference next year is authenticity. And that was interestingly one of the points that Tuck brought up earlier that was part of a comprehensive plan of Portland and it's something that downtowns and cities are struggling with across the nation and across the globe is as we grow and as we change, how do we preserve that which makes us authentic? How do we keep our artists? How do we keep our working waterfront? How do we keep Portland vibrant and authentic while we grow? And so it's a really interesting conversation that we're having as a downtown organization with other downtown organizations across the nation. So I'm just going to look at my notes here and see what else I wanted to say before I hand it. So I think I want to cover just a couple of things before I hand off. One is really that we talked a lot about data earlier and Portland downtown is also evolving to try to be a more data-driven organization. No longer is it let's just throw something at the wall and see what sticks. I want to know are my public services crew and my public works crew being effective? Are they delivering the services and the ROI that our stakeholders expect? If that property owner is paying their tax bill to us, are we delivering back to them something far above what they could have got if they just paid for that service themselves? So there's this power in this collective organization where we can pool our resources and make sure that those resources are used in downtown. And so tracking that and then proving that back to our stakeholders is hugely important. And one of our challenges, and I bet that my friend Lynn and Dinah can speak to this as well, but there's infinite needs on a finite budget. Our budget is only $800,000 a year and most of that is in labor for our staff the people in our office and our public works crew and it's graffiti, it's public restrooms, it's parking, it's sound. I mean I think probably if I look out into the audience you probably all have your own passion project for what you'd like to see in downtown. Flowers and banners and cleaning up cigarette butts and we have to do this all with finite time and finite resources but I think we do it really well. I hope you see that reflected out in the community and know that we're working hard every day. Our board of directors, our staff, our public works crew to make downtown the best experience that it can be. So I think with that I haven't got the hook yet but I feel like I'm coming up on that time and as I said I can talk the leg off a chair. So if anyone wants to continue the conversation with me about Portland downtown afterwards I've got business cards and I would just welcome the conversation anytime. So with that I'm going to hand it over to Lynn. All right we'll keep going because we all work together really closely so I think the format was to wait for questions because we'll all interject together. So my name is Lynn Tillitson, I am the president and CEO of the Greater Portland Convention and Visitors Bureau. Our primary role is to market the Greater Portland Region which goes from Freeport to Scarborough and includes Westbrook and Gorham for tourism. That would involve leisure travelers, international travelers, motor coach business, the cruise ships, sporting events, meetings and conferences, destination weddings and we host media as well. So the difference that we are between the chamber is the chamber really focuses on economic development through businesses coming into the area and we focus on economic development through tourism coming to the area. We're a membership based organization, most convention and visitors bureaus are funded by a portion of lodging taxes across the United States. Maine does not have an optional lodging tax. So we're membership funded, the members are the ones that help us market this destination. Everyone is pooling their resources together to allow us to go out of state to market Greater Portland. Maine has about 36 million visitors that come into the state. Greater Portland has about 6 million that visit specifically here. Now the interesting thing with that is we partner with the Office of Tourism on some research and the question on that survey is what was your primary destination? So 6 million people have said that Greater Portland is their primary destination. So that doesn't include all the people who are going into the beaches region, they're coming here for the day or having dinner or they're passing through, stopping by as they go to the mid-coast or the down east region. So 6 million people is incredibly conservative. So it's one of the things that we really work towards with the city and our community partners is making sure that when we're thinking about growing Portland and growing our region that we're growing it to keep attracting visitors. It's still our number one industry. We need to protect it and respect it and be welcoming to them. There are many other destinations in the world let alone in this amazing state that they could visit and start taking care of them but it's considering as we're growing are we thinking about the impact for them as well. If we're doing a study about bike paths we mentioned bike paths early that's important but are we going to take away some of the streets in order to take care of bikes and then 6 million people are really getting congested. So it's just taking a look at everything if we're doing studies that we're thinking about the residents and we're thinking about the visitors as well. Let's see as we're doing our theme with show of hands how about a show of hands for anyone who either works in the tourism industry has family or friends in the tourist industry or colleagues in the tourism industry. It's one of our number one job opportunities in the state so we're very on top of that really working with our partners with live work in Maine if you're familiar with them about growing the workforce that's a really big need of ours. Let me see what else can I think of. One of the things that we're talking about with tourism is really making sure that we're staying authentic as well. I travel all over the United States and the world all of my staff does as well and we're marketing this area and as Casey said that many people have this vision of Maine and they hear Portland and they're always like oh my gosh I hear it's so beautiful I want to go there well the reason why they say that is because they have this picture in their head and it's it's pristine and it has a mystique to it and we have to protect that but it's also one of the things that I promote all the time is our working waterfront we're authentic traveling all over the place you've probably gone there there's cookie cutter strip malls everywhere and we come home and we're like oh wow it's so amazing so keeping our working waterfront is incredibly vibrant it has to stay vibrant and authentic to continue to attract tourism so let's see working with our partners people obviously will confuse Portland downtown with what we do so the analogy that I use is we're out of state marketing this area we're bringing the visitors in once we bring them in it's up to Casey and her crew to make them happy and keep the streets clean and safe so they're taking care of people while they're here but it's our job to bring them here that's probably it in a nutshell I could go on and on about how we market to each of the different segments but that's a whole other long presentation so I'm going to hand it over to Dinah with Creative Portland Hi I'm Dinah and I'm more of a newcomer than you although I did grow up coming to Maine my whole life to the island of North Haven with my family and ancestors that go way back but I've been all over the world I've spent a lot of time in Europe in China and Los Angeles New York and my husband and I chose Portland to settle in because we liked the people we liked the sea air and we wanted a lifestyle that wasn't so frantic competitive and chaotic especially when you've been living in Los Angeles and dealing with the traffic and the problems there not to mention earthquakes and drought and all the other problems that you try to survive I feel very lucky how simple it is the biggest problem finding a parking space so I'm very grateful to be here and my background I also went to UVM a little before Casey did and I studied art history and art education and so I too have been passionate about the arts my whole life I'm from a family of artists and writers we all create art and what I've found fascinating and it's very evident here in Portland is that in my generation we used to kind of label ourselves or as artists one's a photographer, one's a print maker one's a musician you had your own niche or specific area of talent and my children who are somewhere in college and out of college very much reinforce the notion that those labels are fading and we have musicians poets and painters as well as web designers photographers, everyone's a photographer now on their iPhone but I find that fascinating and relevant because there is such a crossover and it is much more fluid and the arts and self-expression is so prevalent and it's so accessible to all of us now that there's more of an interest in engagement and participation donors are moving more towards philanthropy in the arts and recognizing the value of how arts and cultural organizations contribute to the creative economy and really without those different groups I think we all know the economy would tank who wants to go to a town where there's nothing to do that's fun or interesting because the foodie business has really taken off here and the restaurants are so sought after we have more people willing to go out at night which is kind of a new thing for Mainers people why are you going out again tonight? I think it's normal but apparently in the winter here no one ever wants to go out I have some friends who have been living here their whole life that I've known when I was a child and they said you've gotten me out more in the last three months than I have been out in 20 years so anyway enough about that I am happy to be Executive Director of Creative Portland we were founded by a city TIF in 2008 as a merger between PACA which was the Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance and Creative Economy Steering Committee report which really formed a work plan that created Creative Portland as a quasi-municipal organization and a 501c3 non-profit so we have up to 21 board members which I'm weighing the pros and cons of that right now in terms of board cultivation and really kidding aside wanting and needing a lean working machine with feet on the ground and hands on the table because unlike these guys who are in my mind wealthy we are we're a non-profit with a budget less than 200 grand we have no membership we rely on donations and grants and with the NEA this is a big deal so we are going to be reaching out to the community and to corporate sponsors and I will be extending my reach to national sponsors as well because I think there's an opportunity there we haven't really gone out to those people who will benefit from Portland and Maine we are go-to destination not just in the summer but in the winter as well and if we create something exciting with all of our partners Northern Lights Music and Arts Festival or something all the organizations and all of our stakeholders can be involved in that and we don't just have to do it with arts and cultural fledgling organizations we can reach out to LL Bean and Thompson's Point and all others and create a big splash for Portland that puts us on the map beyond our immediate peninsula to stretch out and go beyond into greater Portland and into all the districts of Portland especially in some of our current programs which we are going to get to in a minute but so that gives you an idea of how we were formed and who we are and up to now since 2008 from all the minutes I've read and from the interviews I've had and I'm not kidding I have 20 meetings a week that's how busy I'm sort of with my information overload so if I don't know your name forgive me I used to think I had a great memory but now it's like what? but I will say that we are here to forge relationships and to facilitate partnerships and to convene groups that may not have gotten together before that will benefit from being together just to talk about connecting you cannot underestimate the value of connectivity and networking and I've been very blessed to be part of the Omega class with Lyft 360 and we are graduating next Friday and there's Jane who's on my team and that's been a wonderful experience too because I came to Portland with a passion for wanting to celebrate diversity and to really acknowledge our differences here and to be proud of those differences and I was kind of shocked coming from a culturally diverse and city, Los Angeles to find how segregated we are today in 2017 and part of that it just takes time but so much of it is about exposure and really spreading awareness and if we give more opportunities to integrate all the different communities that exist into our arts and cultural organizations in leadership positions on boards and to use the arts to spread that messaging we're going to be in a much better position to work together because the more we share the more we trust each other the more we trust each other the more likely we are going to want to collaborate and problem solve together and then that really creates productivity I think okay so what kind of partnerships would we create? Well we might do something I can't speak about specifics right now because we really are in development stages and let me just back up one second we are initiating a city-wide cultural plan because we need to update the 1998 cultural plan that's the last time it was done and so we're going to rely on the stakeholders private public and non-profit constituents and stakeholders to tell us what the gaps are what your barriers, boundaries obstacles are for success and it really comes down to who so if you're in a small group of big guns let's call them the arts and culture giants in Portland the PMA, PSO, PO PST, I mean I'm sort of joking but are you following me? Portland Stage, Portland Innovation Portland Symphony Portland Museum of Art as well as the main historical society Portland Public Library Mecca and USM those I consider to be the big guns so I said well let's all get together and discuss some of these issues you know what I mean we got together all eight of us who were at the table they said for the first time just them all together to discuss some of the issues that they're dealing with and they're in a whole different league than the organizations and the artists who I got together with later who work in silos and don't have the privilege of you know having a network or seeing each other at events they're just trying to get by and deal with their limited capacity and their hard work to exist but you know my feeling was let's find out how we can you know coordinate together as an example when I brought the artists together and I have to say a third of them of the two dozen were people of color which was unusual for this group for some reason and I assumed everyone might know each other because they were really legitimate you know accomplished artists we're talking about you know some you know the Aaron Stephens and Andy Rosens and you know the main players in Portland and one guy who created that sculpture it's a sort of steel ribbon it's in the ceiling of Pie Men Miyaki you know across from one long fellow he I loved his sculpture so I asked Tom the manager you know who is this guy and I thought he was some old timer oh he's local Portland and turns out he's 28 year old kid you know who's just amazing and I brought him to this meeting and he met another guy Ebenezer Acapo who's doing 3D printing wood laminates to create bracelets and so forth they found out that they both use 3D 2D machines Ebenezer didn't have one Nelson has a water cutter in his studio in gray please come use it anytime you know and so and so anyway it's really cool because we're all just realizing we need to do this more often we have no place to go and that's what creative Portland needs to be we need to be you know an advocacy organization and to be in a pivotal place to nurture and support these organizations that need help that need help because there's no housing there's no studio space available it's not affordable they don't have the capacity to market themselves they can't afford to create their own you know websites and or need help to do that so again what can we do to help we're lucky because our only charge is to help people meaning that everyone else has their own business that they have to do and we're here to say how can we help you how can we convene and support you do you need more professional development do we create a resource center where you can come in and have pro bono legal advice and figure out how to form a 501C3 or how to get a fiscal sponsor us will be your fiscal sponsor we have the liberty of being a 501C3 so we can receive grants and donations re-grant and or just process your donations so I feel so excited about the opportunities ahead for creative Portland and I don't want to go down the path of you know why haven't you done this before I mean why haven't we done it before because we've been establishing a place at the table to be relevant and we have shown and proved to the city that we too have a voice and we too represent a constituent that is valuable and vital to our economy and we have two board members from the city one is the city council member and one is from the office of economic development and so we work closely with them and no one's out to fool anybody you know we're here to help people I mean really and we have programs that you guys have probably heard about as well like first Friday art walk which kind of runs itself because we've set up a format where organizations can upload their own listings and get the venues listed in our tabloid which we print which we pay for we have sponsors some are in the room like Luminato who help us to be able to do these things but we have no operating budget I'm not here to beg, borrow and steal but we need money and we also do two degrees program which is a connectivity networking program which is here to be a welcome wagon for people that are moving to Portland and for people who are here and again are working alone you know and want to connect and be with other people and Casey can tell you her experience she's one of our testimonials for two degrees and we also are providing artists for the new arts in the chamber series which Jill has seen and that's an array of a diverse group of artists we bring in whether they are poets, musicians interpretive dance artists or are all sorts of people to showcase Portland's talent and what we need to from you and what we need to spread awareness of that we want and encourage your engagement your participation as a volunteer now that we have a new street presence on 84th Free Street right across from the back entrance of Mecca we welcome you to come in and see that we are a legit art gallery and exhibition space we want to showcase emerging artists we have a bunch of established and emerging artists in there now representing diversity in Portland and all the work is for sale we want you to come in and look at the art we want to expose you to the art I find a lot of people come into the room and sit down at the table to a meeting and they don't look at the art what does that mean that's new for me from where I've been people come in when there's art and they look at the art it's exposure I don't know if I'm at my time but we have you're about to get the hook I'm ready to go and I just wanted to say that our priority is to nurture and take care of you and be a fiscal sponsor if you need us we now have what should be a fairly ample time for some Q&A and I like to have Jill's breaking it up into quarters and I think I will do the same thing but we'll be able to run through that a whole number of times and do you want to add anything before we launch just I think Pam tried to remind you to say a name also I'm wondering if it's a good opportunity for some of you if you're comfortable with it to throw in what your two and three words were sure we would welcome that as well the first hand I saw was right here and I'm going to do that and then we're going to do quarter by quarter and we'll keep going do not let Susan ask a question I'm just teasing you Susan all right I'll stand up I'll see if I can model this well my name is Susan Morris I'm a condominium developer here in Portland my company is New Height Group we will be most evident to you at this point in time if you headed out the door to go right to Franklin and look left you will see a six-story building going up called Luminato that is 24 condominiums that will be completed in August and we pride ourselves on providing housing at all different price points and design in Portland my themes it is actually the vision of our company which is that we see ourselves as being true players we're a sponsor here today and I think we've sponsored something with everyone sitting up up here whatever but we are very committed to supporting the arts we're very committed to building community and we're very committed to helping grow Maine's economy we're trying to really be active in that area hopefully that is the kind of thing for an introduction I have a very big thought to throw on out and I'm sorry I think Bill just left the room and I think Tuck has departed as well but Quincy I would throw you in this conversation as well and it is that I see the lines blurring within what is truly Portland and KCU held up that lovely visual and it has boundaries around it and I'm wondering if the day has come to stop defining Portland downtown as Portland downtown you see KCU and I'm not trying to blow up your job I was going to give you a huge promotion but now that you have made it a shot at me I'm not so sure but what I'm thinking about is we have various stakeholder groups in Portland and greater Portland we've got the people that live here we've got the people that work here we've got the people that visit here and we seem to still define ourselves as the waterfront the arts district where you go to find the restaurants etc. and I'm looking at the city expanding along the waterfront and out there and I'm looking where everyone is located and where restaurants are in the east end and the west end and where the density of growth in residential is growing so I guess the question I have for the three of you is what is your vision and as I say Quincy and I would have thrown this out to Bill and Tuck as well is how are we thinking big about do we want to blow up this idea or redefine what our neighborhoods are India Street just got defined two years ago last week two people referred to India Street north on the one hand here we are 65,000 people and we are defining ourselves into these microcosms of neighborhoods so I'm just curious how you for each of your stakeholders would like us to define Portland and of course the other integral question to that is how would it ever be funded can we blow up the funding or what would it look like so thank you I will try to limit my questions but I can't promise the rest of the day because I know I am known to be a microphone hound thank you Susan and I hope everyone knows I was kidding Susan is one of the biggest movers and shakers in this community and she does truly love and she puts her heart and soul into everything and I'm glad to have you here asking questions so thank you that's a tough question to wrap your mind around and I would answer that from a couple of different angles and then of course I'll pass it on to Lynn and Dinah to chime in as well Portland downtown is a business improvement district what are those boundaries just because that's how a business improvement district is set up we need to be able to tax you somehow but in the grand scheme of things I think it's good to have neighborhoods I think it's good to have different sections of Portland that have different identities and again speaking of going to this conference out in California every community kind of struggles with this notion of where do we begin and end as a community what are those boundaries that's supposed to be specifically promoting a certain section where do we stop and are we going to say no we only promote downtown we're not going to promote all of Portland and I think the CVB and I have gone back and forth on this too when we talk about tourism and tourists coming and visitors coming into town because we're Portland downtown are we going to say we're not going to tell you any of the restaurants to go to in the West End because they're not in downtown no we're promoting this beautiful wide-ranging product that is Portland we've talked about as an organization growing our geographic boundaries it requires an active city council and an act you know changing our main state charter but I think it's a good question to ask and I think creative Portland originally when that TIFF was formed in 2008 one of their charges was to market Portland as a full community we're in charge of downtown and in charge of the region but I think we all work in tandem so I think in between the comprehensive plan our strategic plan everybody working together we do blur the boundaries of where does Portland begin and end and so I think we're all working together to recognize that Portland is bigger than just downtown in the old port so I hope that answers your question and I did just want to touch on one thing that I didn't mention in my presentation but our partnership with the city is integral to making this work I know a lot of people think that oh the city things get over there and they get held up and they're really making it happen and I can speak to all of our organizations have to work in tandem and really well with everyone at the city, our city counselors the staff, the city manager to make things happen and we have a really well functioning city and we have a city that cares your city counselors care about Portland the staff cares about Portland and they're just making it happen so I just wanted to say that before I hand it off so Lynn what are your thoughts on Portland and how big it is and how big we need to make it you need to be on radio so it's interesting right or TV or something it's interesting because when visitors think about coming to the area they're thinking about they hear Portland they don't know the differences between Portland and Scarborough or you know that sort of thing but when they get here we really market the differences that are happening each community or even each neighborhood within Portland has a different feel to it the people are different the shops or the restaurants are different there's a different vibe in each of those communities and it's good to embrace that and the visitors really like to do that so I think it's okay to have those little communities but what we really need to work on is internally our communities working together I'm trying to work really closely with many of the other communities and their city managers and mayors and city councils to let them know that we're all in this together it really isn't just Portland although Portland is certainly a draw for visitors it's all of us working together they're going to come and they're going to spend time with the beaches and Scarborough and they're going to go to Freeport they're going to do you know hike the mountain and Poundall it really is everywhere we can't say that visitors are just going to come to Portland and never leave Portland it's not going to happen so it's working collaboratively Portland has been charged you know by the Office of Economic Development in the work plan to be the lead agency to market and brand Portland and we have not done that yet we've had initiatives where we tried to consolidate and come up with a slogan that we could at least work with in terms of having consistent branding and it started out being yes, life is good here and that worked for a nanosecond until new executive directors came in and changed their Portland downtown and changed theirs to eat, pray, love eat, shop, stay, play and the convention and visitors bureau changed theirs to Portland, authentic by nature you know we have created Portland and are keeping it salty you know, so anyway we'll see where we end up with that but what I wanted to say is that I've been very surprised learning from many arts organizations that their rooms are often empty in the summer and I'm like why, what you know, you've got a gazillion tourists coming into town well, you know, the tourists are going to the old port and down to the streets where all the shops are and we're going to do a better job now of marketing the arts to tourists, we're going to work with the state tourism bureau and with Lynn and we are going to create art tours and we're going to create accessibility for the tourists who are coming in who don't, you know, know what's going on in the arts and I don't just mean the big guns again you know, Portland ovations and they have amazing you know, talent that they're showcasing of talent that comes from out of town, you know, we have a lot of talent here in Portland and Thompson's point is brewing with all sorts of activity with the Children's Museum moving down there soon and with concerts there throughout the summer and you know, incredibly beautiful venue we're going to, we're really going to promote that and push that forward in the future after we get the cultural plan done and validate that this is what people want so that's what we're going to do in terms of greater Portland. Great, I'm going to give Jill the microphone for a minute. It's hard for me to just moderate with your indulgence I'd like to just add a few comments and one is I wanted to reference us back to the new comprehensive plan and a major part of that is the development of the Portland and promoting growth and density off peninsula so that for example Enduring Center there's a lovely neighborhood there with Pat's Meat Market I go there for my bacon there's Woodford's Corner which has a couple of new restaurants and is at the beginning of a whole development there and then of course we in North Deering leak over to Westbrook where there's a lot going on in the greater Portland kind of sense and folks downtown leak over to Sopo and so there's a lot going on both artistically and in the music venue and all those things and then the other thing I wanted to mention is this notion of Portland as a hub that we should take advantage of that people are coming to Portland I think and through these organizations we are part of promoting people if Portland is your main place you're coming but get out to the rest of this state if you buy a piece of pottery on exchange street why not encourage that person to go out to Georgetown where the pottery is made if you buy a lamb's wool sweater why not encourage that person to go up to Bethel where the lambs are where the wool is grown and that's part of helping we are a major part of the economy of the entire state and I think we can continue to be planful about that so I just wanted to throw that in I'm going away now thank you very much Jill Jill is at the center of things and I know how hard it is for her to not comment on a lot of things that are going on around here because she knows a lot about it we are now in this quadrant my name is Marcia Sharpe and I'm with LIF 360 Jill you asked that we put our words into play or some other words two of mine were vibrant and waterfront one of yours was ode to fish a question that may be lurking here we've had these two remarkable presentations about a city that has everything going for it growth, vibrancy and it's bigger than the city I want to get at the underside how do you who are in the business of promoting and growing this fantastic resource or one of our other panelists in the back of the room how do you think about the tipping point you must wake up at night and think at what point do we become not so vibrant and not so authentic and is this within our control or do we just try to tame this engine and hope I'll answer that one or at least try to say something about it that's a really good point I think it's part of all of us working together to making sure that we're working with the city we're working with the regions to grow and grow responsibly and really think about making sure we're staying authentic it is the thing that we are it's who we are the core of who we are and that needs to stay that way you know will there be too many tourists I don't know if we'll ever get there really I mean we are a bucket list destination and we have a very very large state a very large beautiful state and a very large beautiful region if you think of all of New England the motor coaches and the international market don't just come to Maine they're traveling all of New England so I don't know if we'll ever get to that point where we're just overrun by tourists I think on the flip side we have to make sure that we're protecting it to make sure tourism continues to come here and doesn't go away because what we have here with our community with the arts downtown, our surrounding regions the amount of restaurants we have and hotels and things that we have here that as locals we all enjoy and this is why we live here as well we have to protect tourism because 68,000 people are not going to sustain what we have in this community it's just not going to happen so I don't think we'll ever get to the point where we're just overrun because we're just so large we're so vast and because we're a bucket list destination it's really important for us to continue to market for new tourism there's so many places in the entire world to visit these days the world is so accessible that anybody could pick up a magazine or go to turn on TV and see advertisements for Dubai and California and say okay I'm going to hop a flight, I'm going to go so there's too much competition that I don't think we ever have to worry about that we just have to worry about keeping our authenticity making sure we're welcoming so people do continue to come here that's more of the concern is making sure they continue to come here I just want to continue in that vein and the two words that really came to my mind the first is balance and this was talked about a lot at the conference that I was just at around authenticity and that balance between chains and mom and pops and growth and historic preservation right so we've got a strike of balance but I think Lynn is playing devil's advocate and I like that because I was going 2-2 and it's we're the it thing right now right we're thinking oh my god we're going to grow and it's going to get so out of control and that can change in a minute one of the presentations we saw in California was this guy put up some slides of ruins of old cities and he said they thought they were going to be the it thing for a while and now so he was really just calling our attention to you know be careful that before you grab onto that needle and try to pull it back that you're being mindful that you want to maintain slow consistent growth you want to keep your residents here your residents happy speaking of mobility that was my you know my second word people are mobile and where they can visit and where they can go but millennials and other people can choose where they want to live they can live anywhere so why live in Portland we need to provide them a place that they can see themselves moving to staying growing a family we lose young people when they graduate high school they go off to college and they you know some some of them never come back so how can we build a community that they can envision themselves either staying in or coming back to and living here so I just think we need to be cautious and not live in that place where we're fearing growing too big but being mindful about the balance as we grow and then trying to keep this place the beautiful Portland that we love it maintain it and don't get too scared that would be my advice I just simply wanted to say I think we need to protect and preserve you know what we've got and we need to make sure there's some spaces for the arts and cultural organizations to exist and stay here that's a very very serious issue okay I think I'm on to this section I remember we're doing section but one in each section so I will do that thank you I'm James paid field I'm here with the Mitchell Institute but also with Port Fringe means Fringe Theater Festival so multiple hats I'm going to switch back and forth between the two but I was very I guess I have like just a few comments but I was very heartened to hear what you were saying when David Foster Wallace talks about and consider the lobster which is an excellent essay that you should all read about Rockport main that tourists are a cultural hatred but an economic imperative and I'm glad that you keep bringing back to this idea of balance and especially having balance be for locals and tourists and for the big players especially in the arts community and the smaller players Port Fringe I think we would count ourselves as a smaller player we are sort of more of a hub and a connector between a lot of the bigger players because we use them as venues and we're trying to break down silos so I'm happy to talk to all of you after about all of this but I guess it's also these issues of as a local and as a millennial I tend to avoid the Old Port Festival like the plague or anywhere on the low middle street in the summer because the arts district becomes the haven for locals where they don't have to wait two hours to get a table at a restaurant or 30 minutes to get a drink at a bar so I guess I wanted to bring all of those to the fore as well as this need to look out for the little guy and look out for locals and make sure that artistic people and creative people who helped really make Portland a desirable destination are not crowded out and feel as if they are being pushed out in the name of growth and development. And I just want a couple of comments on that one is I'm so excited that Congress Street has kind of grown and come into its own and that it is kind of like the locals Main Street now and where you go for happy hour after work and you see lots of business suits because once upon a time and you may have heard of my presentation earlier but that wasn't the case on Congress Street and it was vacant store front so now it's you know you got Nosh and Emelica and 555 and Bearded Ladies Jewel Box and LFK and I could go on and on in the state theater and it is so vibrant now so it is really coming to its own so I hate to think that you know we avoid the old port and Commercial Street during the summer but it's great that we have this kind of festival and then I'm trying to think the other point that I wanted to make but yeah I just think this coming into its own and oh old port festival so I'm from La Coney in New Hampshire and we have Bike Week there yes I got some reactions so you know if you live in that city where you know you have a heavy tourism industry or you have these events sometimes it does push the locals out like we had people who when Bike Week would come to town they were out for the weekend for the week because they just didn't want to be there for it but you may have heard me mention earlier also part of my initiatives and the boards initiatives we had Lisa White come facilitate our board retreat and our board really wants to look at how can we make Old Port Festival more attractive to locals and visitors and also support our small businesses so we've kind of recognized that it's one of those events which you love to hate and hate to love so we'll be working on that so thank you only one day and not a week right exactly okay let me move into this quadrant right here hi as I trip over my bag and drop the mic I'm Liz Murley my three words are our new home because as of this weekend my husband and I will have lived here for six months so after actually living abroad for 17 years so we're really we've got a learning curve and so just to be brief we're having so much fun and so thrilled to be here and I could do 20 minutes on all the fabulous things so please just take that as a given I we have however been shocked by the level of homelessness in the downtown and I would imagine in other parts of the city as well we're just diving in so I guess my question to the panel or to other folks here is particularly in a place that is so nurturing and empathic and welcoming what is being done how can people help you know I've had some hilarious conversations downtown with folks who clearly are living living rough as it's called in London where we've been living and then I've also had frankly some a little bit scary interactions and so I'm just wondering what's being done how can a person help I'm so glad that you asked that question I'm going to step in because this was one of the big themes at the downtown conference I keep referring back to that but that's my professional conference where I hear from people all around the country in other cities and the issues that they're struggling with and let me just reassure you that Portland is not the only place that is facing serious issues with homelessness right now and we heard a presentation from this woman Carrie who's actually got a fellowship from Stanford right now to look into the root causes and how can we help as a community and Amy Garan who's over there in the downtown experience liaison is an expert in everything that's going on in downtown in Portland and how everyone is coming together to try to help so bend her ear later she's your girl but first I want to say that there is this a two prong trend that happened about 20 or 30 years ago and the first was that we started closing mental health facilities insane asylums and pushed everyone out onto the streets and then the second thing that happened and said people can have the right to refuse treatment and help so in certain states and maybe even all over the country if a police officer walks up to someone because they've been called and like somebody's laid out on the street etc and they go up to that person and say do you need assistance and they say no they cannot help them it'd be kidnapping if they took them seriously but in our community we have a myriad of resources I'm sure you've heard of Preble Street Resource Center and they provide a whole host of services from food to working on getting them shelter trying to find them jobs and resources we also have the Milestone Foundation which we contribute $6,000 to a year we just in partnership with Machiah Savings Bank raised $10,000 for them through a shop for a cause program and they have a program called Home Team and they are a direct street outreach team so they can go up to these folks because they're not police and they can go up and find out if they need help and connect them to resources so I assure you as you've noticed that Portland is an incredibly caring and amazingly sensitive community and we're doing everything that we can Housing First is another program that's very popular right now which basically says it's really hard to stabilize someone and get them services if they don't have a place to live but it's a challenge and then we could go into the whole heroin epidemic and you know opiate addiction and that we only have 16 beds in the entire state for people so it's a really a myriad of issues but again bend Amy's ear but I can assure you that between the city of Portland Preble Street Resource Center Milestone Foundation that we are doing everything that we can to help these people and it's heartbreaking it breaks my heart but I think Portland is doing as much as we can right now we need more people, volunteers, resources and money and lobbying at the state to jump in and help as well I'll add in for the tourism sector it's difficult when cruise ships come in there's far more homeless or panhandling traffic that happens in the congested area people that we don't normally see on a day to day basis they come out because it's cruise ship day so that can be very difficult and we get a lot of comments about it so it's something that we have to always be aware of, work with the city on but you mentioned Congress Street being your haven when it's busy and it's probably not a very popular comment to say but many people ask why do tourists not go to Congress Street I want them in my business why are they not coming up here because we as a community are very comfortable we know our community we know the different types of people that are in our community we know that it's overall very safe when a visitor comes to a destination they don't know that you've said you've had some uncomfortable interactions and that's what happens as visitors walk up towards Congress Street the demographics change a bit they become a little bit more uncomfortable and they turn around in the heart of the old port and it's unfortunate because Congress Street is an amazing street and so we're struggling with that a little bit on our side we're getting comments just briefly to me it's a drop in the bucket here so it depends on your lens or perspective I suppose but I will say that Preble Street and Catholic Charities and Salvation Armies doing an amazing job and there's only 80 people on the list for housing first right now so it's a solvable problem here in Portland and we're very blessed my name is Naomi Mayer my first thing is Woodford's Corner because I live there but it's hard not to we've had much broader and I think deeper questions than where I was going to go there however I just want to remind everyone when you talk about our homeless population and yes sometimes it's uncomfortable many times it's not and I think that what we have to do as a community is educate so when people come off a tourist I mean a cruise ship I love to have them here that's great it's good for our economy we all know that but it's up to us as a community it's a great time to educate people coming from away because it isn't a problem just in Portland it's a national problem it may even be a worldwide problem so you briefly touched on it educate, educate yourself and then get in front of every educator and legislatures face to make sure that our money is going where you want it and that's that's a fabulous place for our tax dollars to go so I just want to make that point before I narrow the conversation because I'd be remiss as a core team member of the Friends of Woodford's Corner which as several of you have mentioned you'd be interested in it because it was just touted in this area and I want to talk to you about you mentioned your board the six people and kind of their focus and I didn't hear you mention a key person a neighborhood person because as somebody else mentioned I don't even think there is a downtown Portland without Portland and it's not just winter really we really go up in status during the winter you know go into any restaurant and I love it here in the winter it's my favorite time and not necessarily I'm not a skier but because Portland is so accessible and I could be on any of these Chamber of Commerce stuff because I love Portland I think Woodford Corner not all of you know but Forest Street Avenue or Street I can't even remember now thank you Forest Avenue is the most traveled street in Maine not in Portland in Maine it's the most trafficked street some days 25,000 cars pass through Forest Avenue except for the highways it's the most trafficked street in Maine and so I think to make sure that everybody keeps Forest Avenue on the radar we have one of your chief players that you mentioned USM and it's crazy that we don't have this beautiful gateway into Portland because the peninsula is getting saturated we are getting unbelievable restaurants out in our area and the unfortunate thing is in our hood the joke is let's go to Woodford F&B let's go take our life in our hands because you got to cross the street and it's really hard to cross the street there for anybody who has the new developments going to deal with that a little bit we have neighborhood organizations that deal with it but I think Portland proper needs to bring when I say us I don't mean our neighborhood just an element because that brings the whole community back to the center and I think we are what makes Portland Portland wait I'd like to quickly say something Casey before you sorry and that has to do with Woodford's Corner we are focused on that just so you know and we'll be in touch with you soon but Aaron Stefan is doing this cool noodle like light street lamps right and we want to expand first Friday and focus on each neighborhood we also want to do specific events in each neighborhood we brought in board members you know several from District 5 whatever we're starting to branch out and we'll be focusing as I say on people that live here as opposed to just recruiting people from Brooklyn out here because Woodford's Corner is the new Brooklyn to Portland hear me but the millennials are here fabulous and they're moving when they go to buy a house they can't always buy on Peninsula even though if you ask them oh yeah I want to be on Peninsula everybody wants to be on Peninsula but when they go to buy realistically they're coming out to our hoods and it's great because it puts that new life there well Naomi I will try to speak to your question as best that I can and first start by saying I'm a Deering Center resident so that is my hood I live on River Street behind the high school so yeah I absolutely love our neighborhood and I am one of the people who traffic and travels up and down Forest Ave every day so I can speak to the fact that a lot of people are driving on Forest Avenue and I think Tuck could probably speak to the fact that part of the comprehensive plan is looking at different neighborhoods to develop kind of these nodes so growth off the Peninsula and really using new zoning methods and mechanisms around those corridors and putting a highlight on those neighborhoods and we our board of directors has a resident representative that represents the interests of it's kind of like our mini neighborhood organization we have a resident on our board that represents all the residents of downtown and then we work very closely with like the West End Neighborhood Association and Susan's kind of my surrogate Munjoy Hill Advocate so we work very closely with other neighborhood organizations and we do have a resident representative on our board that speaks to the resident experience in downtown but definitely considering all the neighborhoods working together and yeah during center My name is Joe Galli I have been a resident of Maine for 10 years in the mid-coast recently I just spent a lot of time in New York and I'm back and I've decided to make Portland my home you know so to speak where's my right is authenticity a great energy and a tremendous balance so I'm all about authenticity as a home and I have found that in many ways so to reiterate the woman who's moved here six months ago it's a beautiful place it's got incredible energy and I believe there's a tremendous balance some of the things that I have worried about coming to this city is the issue of diversity cultural diversity and I'm not talking about integration of ethnicities I think it's lacking number one I have three questions so you can take whatever you want because you just sit me here the other question of concern I heard was the segregation of this branding thing between three agencies which is really odd and the fact that there's a lack of coordination perhaps maybe I'm overstating that but I didn't hear the word main arts commission which really in any other conversations which really concerned me I've been involved in the mid-coast with CMCA and I knew that name has always come up before but I didn't hear it in this conversation so I think I'll leave it at that I'm going to start with the main arts commission I've referred to the grants that we're going after which is through the main arts commission and they have been very supportive in giving us a $10,000 grant for the cultural plan initiative that we're working on and we also are working in tandem with them to possibly do future art tours in and around Portland and beyond extending into the rest of the state and I work very closely with them and are excited about the opportunities that they're bringing in also with the tourism bureau which I'm going to ultimately bring to Lynn and Casey but in terms of diversity also a passion of mine and there are a lot of groups forming I'm part of Empower the Immigrant Woman and I just went to a conference this past weekend and a gala for that and it's really more about connecting connecting connecting and Lyft 360 is all about that and facilitating that connectivity and networking through our two degrees program and creating opportunities to integrate diversity with cultural acceptance is our challenge it's not just being aware it's about accepting an immersion and participation and really spreading a lot of awareness to the mainers that are here already so they can understand that the immigrants don't have an immigrant gene you know everyone's from a different community and from a different place with different traditions, cultural backgrounds and we need to educate the public and I hope we can do that through the arts so on the tourism sector we work with the main office of tourism very very closely because they're the primary marketing organization for the state they have a much larger budget than I do so we partner with them they have a cultural coordinator on their on their staff and we live in if anybody's heard of her she's amazing and keeps all of us connected and informed we're working closely with Dinah and the main historical society and PMA so it's working together for us to stay informed because we don't develop anything we market it so we rely on what's informed so we know what to market and what's going on I just wanted to add one quick thing also to you is that in terms of the main arts commission we create a Portland represents Portland on a national and regional basis so we're part of the AFTA surveys which are doing economic impact survey now and Portland will be the recipient and benefit from that survey and we also represent Portland and Greater Portland and Maine and AFTA which is New England Foundation for the Arts and are hosting a workshop at the CCX workshop in New London in June so we also are an advocacy group and we are very involved with these government organizations and we're hoping they're going to stay alive Thanks Dinah and I'm just going to try to wrap up that question I think Dinah did a great job of answering your question about the Maine Arts Commission with regard to diversity she mentioned a couple of organizations we also have the Maine Access Immigrant Network here in Portland and I know that the city has just established a new department called the Office of Economic Opportunity to work and try to integrate folks into the community find them jobs etc so the city's just established that new department I think they just had a job description for the department head someone to run that so if you haven't applied they're in the final stages about to give an offer it's closed I didn't want to say that yet and then the offer is on the table nobody talked about branding I want to make sure that we answer all of your questions with regard to branding each of our organizations is a separate nonprofit we have to honor the mission so as a nonprofit we each have a specific mission so I think we need to honor that and honor that through our messaging and branding but I did mention earlier and I hope you caught it but I'll revisit it again is that we all sit together including the chamber and with the city's economic development office on a committee called the Economic Development Stakeholders Committee so we work together to brand and market and communicate about our missions and goals to make sure that we don't overlap and that we're all supporting each other so I think that kind of speaks to the branding and Dina had talked about the yes life good here we did try to make that gain traction and it was meant to you would put in place of life whatever so yes tourism's good here or yes the arts community is good here and they did some surveys afterwards it wasn't super well received by the community but we do work together and we have to honor our missions separately as individual organizations I would like to add to that too actually and I hear you Casey about honoring the missions I'm not completely aligned with that concept because I do believe that outsiders don't know what each organization is or what each mission is nor do they care and I mean I'm talking about from the point of view of somebody that's just trying to get a general idea of what's going on they're not as in tune with what we're doing so we do need to present a unified brand and we need to market Portland to benefit those people that are here and to bring other people in and we need to do that together consistently and have solidarity I believe Lisa Whited my words are diversity youth and community and just quickly wanted to pick up on the diversity conversation because there are some great organizations I'm also part of Portland Empowered which is about connecting our high schools our parents from new majors and students with the rest of the community but really the opportunity for any organization in this room is to look at your board of directors and make sure you've got at least one third one third of your board should be diverse LGBTQ color, age diversity we know we're an old population so just start there because that's how the change can happen we can talk till we're blue in the face but we really need the people leading these organizations to represent the diversity that we want to see the change that we want to see that's right and we're getting closer with the city council we're getting closer okay we agree we're in solidarity my name is Rosanne Graf and I'm here as a subsidized participant from the western neighborhood association and people from those neighborhood associations like to thank LIFTS 360 for doing that for us and I just wanted to make a comment and then I have a question for Casey one of them is that I've lived in Maine all my life and if you are new here I would urge that you go to your neighborhood association last time I looked on the city's website I think there's about 24 of them so there's one for everyone if you don't find one in your neighborhood you can always start one your city councilor will help you do that but they are a really great place to meet people I'll introduce you to all the ins and outs of Portland and so on and I'll stop with my pep talk there and go to my question Casey is that I, lots of times through my activities with the neighborhood association have had people met people who live downtown who between commercial street and Cumberland Avenue and say who's our neighborhood organization and I just have a question for you as to how that person who you said is the residential representative is chosen and how can people get involved in that? Absolutely that person is David Packard and he lives next to Grace and if anyone would be interested in giving feedback to him or having him be a resource a conduit through which information flows those residents in downtown his email address is right on our website and we're really unique I actually love the way that our board is built we have a nomination process and we actually have ballots that go out to all of our property owners that are voting on our seats so it's not just a seat is empty and who wants to come on board so it's a very structured process and I believe his seat will be coming up in June so we'll be accepting nominations so if you know someone who would like to run for the resident position for Portland downtown send them to me so they can get nominated but David Packard is a local lawyer and a resident and a property owner so I think he's a good representative of residents in downtown he'd certainly be open to feedback and would meet and have coffee with people so I would say reach out to David he's the representative and if you know somebody who's interested in running let me know you're welcome I have a question about homelessness and diversity etc etc nobody's comment about Portland as a regional service center as a unique urban environment that is very different from perhaps the average cruise ship passengers suburban reality and how how do we educate it's an opportunity it's teaching opportunity perhaps that's right and that's what I meant by lens and perspective it depends where you're from and what your exposure is but yes and in terms of educating people that's a that's a much bigger issue I mean we can talk to our president about that we went there we have reached a point where we need to break for lunch and I wanted to just a couple of each of us want to kind of make a closing comment on that actually what I'll let you start with that well two things popped as I was listening and enjoying the exchange amongst all of us one is a quick story now I told you I have phrases in my head that make me remember things that I care about one is hometown tourist and during my two turns as mayor that was a focus for my year of proclaiming and welcoming that we should and I invite you all who are Portland residents to be hometown tourists don't be like my first husband because I have two ex-husbands but my first husband was a New York City resident Puerto Rican lived raised on the Upper East Side he born and raised in New York City and had never been to the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty let's not be that so as we focused on tourism for bringing people here let's also get out there you know shake ourselves out and go down to Woodford to that beautiful new restaurant or have some delicious Cajun food at the Bayou kitchen I could go on and on about places to go go out and have some beer beer is made I think you can actually pick your hops in the tank and then they turn it into beer for you know just kidding so my other point was on the slogan I yeah things are good here things are good here didn't quite work but the one that popped in my head at the time that that was floating was Portland period yes Portland yes says it all for me thank you thank you very much my only now I'm not going to be able to talk anymore my only sort of thing that stood out for me is how often people have talked about authenticity and balance and that we should keep that in the forefront of our minds as we go forward authenticity and balance as a way to move forward as a way to continue to grow and not lose not kill the goose that laid the golden egg while we're here