 I appreciate how you're here today, got a lot to cover. I've talked to these two gentlemen and I'm going to kind of give them some guidelines but let them run from there. They know this doesn't matter very much and the rest of us will go jump in. First thing you're going to talk about is just the momentum. Economic development announcement, Scout, FN, Purpose Solutions, Pure Power. Starting with Chairman Walker, tell me a little bit about how you're trying to leverage the momentum, be selective, but also knowing that some of these are going to take a couple years to get built out and not pass it over to the opportunities that are moving themselves now. We're making, let me just begin. By the way, can everyone hear me clearly? Let me just begin by saying thank you to the Chamber for the invitation, for having me this morning. Thank you, Mayor Rickman, for being willing to have me sit next to you for what's going to be, I think, a really good conversation. And also I'm going to shout out Susan McPherson because she is the only person in all of South Carolina who could get me anywhere before eight o'clock in the morning. The last time I made it anywhere prior to eight o'clock I was in law school but Susan also happens to be a constituent so I cannot tell her no. And please remember that come on June 2024, a primary season, okay? But what I would tell you all is that the county has had momentum for quite some time in the area of economic development and I think you have to go back prior to my time over at some county council. Beginning in 2012, the council commissioned the Richie County Economic Development Office and Jeff Rubel heads up that office and the approach, if you will, to economic development for quite some time has been buying product, finding sites, finding land, industrial parks, what have you with the aim of attracting investment. That's the one of the ways that we've sort of been able to maneuver or work around some of the challenges or hurdles that our tax structure presents. And so if you look at the run that we've been on, especially for the past five years, it's been a rather impressive run. It's been historic. Between 2012 and 2023, if you include Scout, we've seen about $4 billion in capital investment. If you include Scout as far as the number of jobs, that's approximately 15,000 jobs created during that period. If you just look at the last, say, three to four years between 2020 and 2023, the lion's share of the investment has come during that time. Nearly talking close to $3 billion in investment and nearly 7,000 jobs created. Again, that's if you include the $2 billion investment from Scout along with the 4,000 jobs that are expected. So we've had this momentum going for quite some time. I've been told that if it ain't broke, excuse the back language, bad English rather, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And so the approach we've taken, it has yielded positive results. We've been able to grow the tax base, we've been able to create jobs, we've been able to improve our infrastructure, we've been able to increase the value of the mill, which is very important when you start talking about the military and making sure that we can pay for services of a growing county without having to raise taxes. So that is what we've been doing, making as far as just trying to build on that momentum. Great, and they recommend, tell us a little bit about your thoughts on this process. How involved you were with your sat-student leverage spending on the city standpoint? Well, first of all, he's being very modest. A lot of these deals that you see before going on right now, would not happen if it wasn't for his leadership. I can say that because I sit next to him in a lot of meetings. And how someone works with a business community, how they help recruit, and Scout wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the efforts of the chairman and Jeff Ruble. The city had obviously a major role because without water and sewer, that project wouldn't happen either. So working together to make it possible was incredible. But I think one of the things that we're forgetting to talk about here, too, is we named all the major players. But just in the last 16 months, we've had close to 1,300 new small businesses open. Just here in the city, and I know the county has a whole stack as well, people are moving here and taking opportunities. They feel the momentum. They see what's happening around them, and they want to be part of it. And so we've got to remember the backbone of this community, why we're excited that Scout's going to be here, and it's going to help spin off some smaller spiderweb businesses, much like we saw in the upstate. You know, there are over 500 companies in the automotive industry in South Carolina. We're going to add a whole lot more right here in the Netherlands. But the investment of the small businesses here is the backbone of this community and has been for the Netherlands for a long time. And I think we're also starting to get the recognition as a region that we haven't seen before. And I was at the U.S. Conference of Mayors the other weekend. In Columbia, South Carolina, as a city and as a region, got more national play in that three-day period without any of us pushing it. People talking about the things that we are doing here in our community in the region. They talked about the economic growth in the region from Scout. They brought up White Claw. They talked about other, even projects that aren't even supposed to be public, people were talking about. But they were also talking about that we're gaining our reputation of being business-friendly in a center in a capital city. And I think those things are important as we continue to grow. As we move these barriers and the hurdles out of the way to grow these small businesses, I think we're going to see more growth in our community. I mean, this is the land of opportunity right here in Columbia, South Carolina. Speaking of you, Mary, I know when you started serving your first term, a big initiative was that this is certainly permitting all those items being taken into account. What kind of reception have you seen from that? Are you getting positive feedback? Do you feel like the staff has adapted to the change you're making? I think that what we're seeing in so far is that people are grasping to what we're doing. You know, we start taking, you know, sewer expansion fees away and opening up the opportunity for somebody to get into a space much cheaper and an opportunity where we're making it easier, having more meetings. We're having less zoning, those meetings that we've ever had before because changing the code, changing the processes made it easier for things to happen at the staff level. Even in the technology, the training and frankly the autonomy to do their job has made things much swifter. And I think that's why we're seeing the impact that we're seeing on the small businesses, the business license. So that's the best way to look at it. We also look at, you know, last year in 22, we did almost a billion dollars in permitting for upfits and new construction. And that was done very quietly. But it was done because we're getting there. We're getting to the point where it's much easier for people to get there. And I think the staff has embraced it. Ayesha Griggers, our head of OVO is in here. Ayesha, raise your hand. She's back there. She's seeing the influence. She's doing an incredible job about outreach. And Ryan Coleman is in here somewhere. I mean, we are economic development. We just brought on Spencer Green to help us with the real estate to really help us when we're out there recruiting. We want to fill every space. And when I say the land of opportunity and why it's important to have that reputation of business friendly business, next time you go downtown, go to the Capital City Club and look out all four of those windows. And what you'll see is a lot of parking lots across our city. Those all could be filled with people living and working downtown in Columbia, South Carolina. Great. Thank you. Thank you both. Staying on that subject and talking about road development and job opportunities. Both of you spoke publicly about the imminent need for affordable or poor housing. We just want to touch on that. How do you all collaborate? Because that's, you know, a new developer's coming in and trying to do that. They need, you know, both of your men. And not all cases, but if there's something that crosses the city's limits, see both of your clients and talk about it a little bit. Sure. Well, I'll take that question. So the county, at least up until, I would say this year, really was not in the affordable housing game, to be quite honest with you. But back in 2022, we agreed and adopted a strategic plan. And so to make sure that we're not a run-aless council and that we have priorities that we want to, you know, set as well as meet, we actually decided that we were to include what we call inclusive and equitable growth. That's part of the strategic plan. And part of that included affordable housing. When we received, I believe it was, $80 million in ARPA funds or American Rescue Plan, that dollars from the federal government, $4 million of that was set aside for affordable housing. Another $2 million was set aside to address homelessness as well. And I'm aware that Greenville, I believe, has resorted to using economic development as a tool for trying to expand affordable housing or workforce housing. I believe they use a special source revenue credit if I'm not mistaken, but they kind of dangle that out there in an effort to entice developers to include workforce or affordable units. But I think economic development, you kind of stand along that line, going beyond incentives. It's about creating jobs that pay a little bit of wage as well. I think it can't just be, well, let's see if we can build, and I'll use this term loosely, but cheap housing. Because I think that's what people tend to think of the status stigma that's associated with affordable housing. But how can we make housing more accessible? And so I think one of the best housing programs you can have is a jobs program. When you bring in jobs that pay a little bit of wage, that allows someone to be able to afford the home of their choice, but I think they have to walk and chew gum at the same time. So as they're trying to increase jobs that pay a little bit of wage, you also entice developers to create what we would call a workforce housing or affordable housing units. I would tell you that we need 16,000, almost 17,000 units of housing. We've got 5,000 plus people waiting right now for assisted housing in the marketplace. So yes, we've had a lot of conversations because there's a lot of pressure to create a housing trust fund. When you build a housing trust fund, you've got to have a way to fund it long-term, not short-term, because that money will disappear very quickly. So two things that we looked at in the survey, what are our true needs? We bring them embarked on this. It was a very interesting conversation because 85% of their future needs aren't around single-family homes. It's around party flexes, duplexes, town homes, and condominiums. And why is that? Because we have an aging population. The majority of folks that are looking for future housing are going to be baby boomers, single mothers of their kids at home, which is a very large category that we don't talk about a lot. There are millions that just want minimal space and they want to be out of access to come and go. But how do we do that? Well, we have real need for class A office space in Columbia. People are downsizing, but they want quality. So we've got to create incentives. How do we convert those B and C office spaces into housing that's affordable, creating that workforce housing, keeping people downtown? Because the more density we have downtown, the more opportunity we have and even if we get 15 million visitors but only 5 million spend the night, we've got to have reasons to have people here and density of life is part of that. And we need to build on the momentum we have. I think the other part is that we're going to have to do some creative things. In Charlotte, North Carolina a group of hedge fund, the ex-hedge fund guys got together and created a, I guess you would call a financial plan to attack affordable housing. I'm going up there in a couple weeks to sit down with these folks and they're willing to share the plan with us. They don't want to be the investors but they want to give us the roadmap. The entire plan on how you can build a reoccurring fund and make it what they have done and realize that to attack affordable housing and truly bring attainable opportunities within the community. You've got to have a sustainable model and it has to be a business model. It can't be a subsidy model. It can't be a model that's dependent on what administration is in the office. And so I'm very excited to see what they've done and how they do it. But we're innovating. And I want to give a call to my counterpart, because we talk all the time about what we can do together, how to tackle these issues and housing is one of them because there's crossover. And I mentioned earlier we have a lot of pressure around housing trust fund. But Chairman Walker and I both know that if we put $10 million in a housing fund the five projects that are floating around there right now will feed that up right now because they average about $2.1 million each when gap financing that they need to keep it at that level downtown. That's not a sustainable model. So we've got to be creative and I think this is where the business community and the opportunity and the relationships that we have with other communities we can take what's worked and bring it here and address the issue. But it is a major issue for us and it's not getting easier to tackle and you're going to have to tackle it sooner than later. The city is part of that is taking every residential model it has and we're putting it out there. We're putting in infrastructure and we're working with developers to build those houses and put those back out in the market. We're also consolidating and evaluating every piece of property that we have. We're going to use those properties that we're no longer using or don't have a need for is incentive for housing and business. We're going to approach the state. I'm going to go on record we are approaching the state because if the state is going to continue to move things out of the city all that property for us to use is economic development incentive not only for business recruitment but for housing. DHEC leaves this campus. Think about how many downtown affordable attainable housing structures we could build that would build up our density would help us with our food desert help us with our workforce needs and allow us to detract more and more. We are the capital city. Speaking of the bridge gap financing, I saw something in the news last night about a $50 million project proposed for North Main Street and up for incentives. Is that something that is under under consideration for both of you all? For which project? We've got some meeting coming through again. I think it might have been a challenge. So we're working with them at the city level because the part of their structure they got a kind of complicated structure and there's some HUD financing. I think Steve Middleton is the developer of that project he's out of Virginia, he's got a very good track record. I think it's going to be the first step we need projects like that to jump start. I mean when you look at that stretch North Main, how many places in America can you go to that somebody has an opportunity to buy on Main Street that's affordable and build something you can walk out and point at the state house. I challenge you there's not many places. That is the land of opportunity. We need that first step to show people that there's a path and a willing way to do that. I think a lot of their base is looking for, we're working together along with I think Mayor Covell is in here from NPC. Mayor excuse me, they're changing and they're here with us to help the county and the city come up with a standard and send them. It wouldn't be a chamber event if we were to talk about tax monetization and I know that Chairman Ballard, that you your council has rejected the last two gun conditions and reasons to keep that in line and obviously they're going to put the tax monetization in the place, it's got that other way. Where to go from here? How are you all collaborating? When will the state get involved with the delegation? I just love to meet you all and possibly work out where you see that going. Is it just two minutes? You've got 27 more minutes before you go to the court. Well, it's an important issue. So, taxes, I find myself asking if taxes will ever be low enough and I don't ask that question sarcastically but you live in a state where we have some of the lowest income taxes. We have some of the lowest sale taxes. We have some of the lowest or occupied taxes and you got Act 388 which then exempts additional properties from tax rolls. And then the governor recently signed in 2022 that was the comprehensive tax reduction which effectively brought the assessment ratio from 9% to 6% for manufacturing. And we still hear that taxes are too high. And so that's why I asked myself the question do we ever reach a point where we feel that taxes are low enough? Yes. I think two things can be true at once. With respect to the tax structure being a barrier or a challenge to growth at least in the county's vantage point that has not been the case. You've heard me rattle off some of the statistics over the past decade as far as the county has been able to accomplish in the area of economic development but also understand that for investment properties and commercial properties that don't qualify for many of those incentives that don't qualify in the county industrial park incentive. They don't qualify for the special source revenue credit. They don't qualify for the fee of a little tax. I understand that taxes can be a challenge because the mayor and I we've been having those conversations. We'll continue to have conversations. As far as the tax monetization study I certainly believe that it is a good faith effort to make us more competitive from a tax standpoint when you start talking about non-owner-occupied properties or investment properties and the like that does present some challenges for the county. I would say keep in mind that the county has not yet commissioned a study. The study was commissioned by the city. The mayor has been more than generous with his time in sharing that with us. We've had multiple conversations about it. We've he's met with me as well as the auditor, the treasurer, the county administrator. There's going to be another roundtable discussion but the challenges presented to us as a county is that it would require us to, I guess, implement, if you will, some rather obviously austere measures when it requires you to actually scale back on spending and any revenues you see from new growth as well as additional revenues from spending cuts that would go into an S4 account to then eventually pay for any sort of reduction in the assessment ratio. And so with the county that's growing and with the county council that we're already running on a pretty tight budget. Currently the county has a triple A credit rating. The county has received numerous awards for being fiscally prudent and what have you but that's because we are on a very tight budget and so any funds that we actually, I guess any surplus revenues, if you will that usually goes into fund balance and that fund balance is used for purposes of our credit rating so in the event we have to borrow say for major projects we make sure we get the lowest interest rates. The other piece of this is the county we do have a lot of major projects that are going to be coming up pretty soon. We've got the 911 emergency services that's a 40 million dollar bond we have to take out. We're going to have to pay for that. We've got the family services center that's when these unfunded state mandates. There are certain state agencies that the county is required to provide facilities for without any assistance from the state. That's going to run us nearly 40 million dollars. We also have the jail that we're still dealing with. That's going to run us approximately 25 million dollars and then we're talking about a new courthouse as well. Not sure last time any of you have been to 1701 Main Street but it's we can do better to say that we're the capital city and the courthouse ought to be one of our proud jewelers with respect to being a county building and unfortunately it's not. That's going to run us nearly 200 million and so at this point I believe in the county that we anticipate is any, I guess, revenues that we may see from future growth. Yes, we will continue to use those funds to increase our fund balance but at the same time we're going to have to use those funds to pay for major projects that will be coming down the pipeline. So the banner now we will continue to have conversations. We're going to talk about tax modernization. I think it's going to be coming upon the county at some point to at least have our own study commission and one that takes into account our ability to generate revenue to provide, to make sure that the agencies that we fund continue to provide the vital services that many of our residents need often tell people, you know the city is a corporation but the county is a conglomerate. We just don't have Richland County government that we take into account for purposes of funding. We've got the school district, free school district we've got Midlands Technical College we've got the library, we've got the zoo, we've got Columbia area middle health, we've got Richland County Recreation Commission and that's before you get to the Sheriff's Department which comprises a third of the budget, the coroner's office the solicitor's office the clerk of court and so on. So I think before the county can go down the road of committing to, I guess, Tinkering if you will with the assessment ratios or doing anything that could impact our revenues, we'd have to ensure at least commission study that takes into account our needs as well as our ability to generate the revenues to provide for those agencies which in turn provide, you know, to central services for our residents. Thank you. Very good. Well, you know, we've been meeting and I'll have to disagree with my colleague here on the approach because the study actually does show us as a whole as a county and it accounts for the growth. We've been living off one and a half percent growth for over a decade so it's a historical. When we put this plan together the plan was over a ten year period so the first two years and we can set the growth rate and we have the ability to set the growth rate where we need to but we've accounted for all these things in the past we can account for them in the future but long term the play here is to reduce our taxes because we're on average 34 percent more expensive than any other city in South Carolina. Charleston is 48 percent less than we are Greenville's 38 percent less than so when we talk about funding agencies and this and that part of the issue here is that we've allowed the agencies to benefit from the value of the millage and not capture that for other uses as well. I'll give you an example the school board asked for a funding and millage increase this year well you know just the value of the millage was going to give them close to 14 million dollars without even having to ask. So we've got to truly analyze those costs and looking at the revenue in the future growth we lower taxes and build up the tax base it's going to far exceed any money that somebody may lose you're not going to lose money when you're talking about lowering a quarter percent of the tax structure over a 10 year period it really happens the first two years kind of caps we created a financial bridge a reserve fund to protect us from anything moving forward we put a floor in there we don't see the growth that we know we have to stop it we build in a floor to that but when you look at it over a course of the period what makes us competitive right now every big business is getting an incentive but 98% of the businesses around here are small businesses they're not getting that and so we've got to do something you can't talk about affordable housing if you're not talking about taxes because the renters are paying the property tax right now the average collection is three and a half months of the collective rent is what goes to pay for the taxes this is huge when you start talking about competitiveness look we're fighting landlords every day we're absentee landlords that aren't putting money back in how are we going to create a competitive nature that people can't come here we can't build 300-unit apartment complexes at the 10 of 80 to 120 million dollars everywhere we need the ability for folks to build small individual units for people to be able to have those secondary properties and I want to give you an example what the delta is here we've got a house that's assessed at $580,000 in the city they're paying around $4200 a year the same building on the commercial side is paying close to $16,000 a year that's money that's not going back in to cover employee health plans to grow that's what's keeping us from growing is that competitive and I know the county doesn't hear it as much as we do but it is a huge huge issue for the small businesses even for larger investments we had $60 million a project coming in that would provide apartments in an area where we needed help the same project agreement will cost them on a tax structure roughly around $3200 a unit here would be $5,000 in the best based on what the assessor was providing we don't have a choice but to address this issue we have an avenue with the legislature to do it the state legislature is willing to help us and create an opt-in program but what we have to do with the county is build a pathway and show what the true effect is we're not talking about going from 6 to 4 in year 1, we're talking about over a 10 year period slowly building in so that we can recruit and build we have over 100 people in the tax modernization meeting and I simply ask these are folks from all over the southeast, I said if we implemented a plan like this would you invest today or would you wait till the year 10 hands raised up they would start investing today because they know the path well we need these type of investors to grow and at the same time we need to have the ability to support the small business growth when you got folks calling you so I'll give you an example who owns a pizza place out in the northeast his base ram is $22 square foot, the time he repensiles at the end of the year is $36 square foot, where do you think that money is coming from? That's coming from his bottom line, any of those that have been in the restaurant business it's a middle business folks we need to protect every pin and the increase in costs for supply and demand today insurance, gas, utilities and then taxes, we have the ability to levelize these taxes by working together and budgeting yes, there's going to have to be some budgeting but we've already done it at 1.5% growth so we can make it 2% growth and we account for the future needs but for everybody coming down with Scout, everything else think about if there's not a better opportunity to do it, I don't know when there is and there's a way to protect us but we have to sit down and do it and we can't look at it as zoom state of the day I've heard folks say well the school district needs more money the school district has more money than most school districts in the state I have to tighten my bell every year and so should other folks we've got to work together but if we don't fix it and we continue to grow and I will tell the population we've also sent it to the city in the city which is also in the county so that tells you there's some shifting going on we've got to think strategically about what our long term growth pattern is going to be and how we're going to compete because when we talk about taxes corporate taxes, you talk about income taxes, our neighboring states have been lowering corporate tax, property tax for the last decade there's a reason why Raleigh is at 12.5% growth there's a reason why the bedroom community is around Charlotte and other places going there's a reason why the state of Georgia is going at the rate it is we have all the aspects for quality of life and everything but this is a major component that we have to address and there's a way to do it and we've talked a lot about getting back in the room and saying let's come up with something that makes sense not only for the small guys but for the future investors that keeps us competitive because the midlands has more opportunity than any part of the state that's why Scouts here we've got a built in workforce we have three major highways we have a quality of life we have things that other communities dream about we've had the reputation of being business unfriendly and tax heavy and part of this is we've got to look internally we've got to understand the value of our millage rates we need to work together to do things and I brought it up before and I'll bring it up again I support the zoos growth but I don't support it with property tax I want to support it with hospitality and accommodations tax because that's why those taxes are in place we need to understand the value we need to make sure that when we're moving forward that when someone asks us for a millage rate or a bonding capacity like the library did years ago we need to make sure that we're capping it at that value and that growth goes back to the county so that they can continue to move things forward and take care of these problems so yes I believe there's a path yes there is support for but it's incumbent on all of us to show support and hear their voices that this is a major issue for our region making it if I may I just want to add to what the mayor has said I think it's important for everyone in this room to know that the county has not raised its millage in over five years as well as the county council has not raised the school districts millage in I want to say in almost five six years now and that has a lot to do with the concerns that we've heard about our taxes in the county but it also as I said to the media when a request comes before me I have to reconcile the needs of that agency with the bandwidth of residents to absorb a tax so I just want to be very clear about that that we have not increased the millage for the county's general fund nor for the school districts going on almost five, six years now I think another piece that's oftentimes excluded from the conversation about taxes is property values because when you look at how a tax bill is calculated you've got fair market value you've got the assessment ratio and then you've got the millitrate and your property value or total assessed property value in a county that is what would drive the millitrate oftentimes in Richmond County the value of the mill in my most recent conversation with the auditor was 1.8 million so pretty much the mill would generate 1.8 million in our property tax revenue then when we get to Charleston the value of the mill there is approaching 5 million so they're able to charge or assess a much lower millitrate or fewer mills generate more revenue from services that are needed while at the same time more in the tax bill so in some ways it's not a fair comparison and what drives the property values in Charleston has a lot to do with all the multi-billion dollar properties that they have there they lead a half thousand in Richmond County we may have a few hundred and you look at Greenville they have over 600 manufacturers we don't have anything close to that in Richmond County so we're on the right path the mayor and I will continue to have very candid conversations about this his heart is in the right place my heart is in the right place but I'm also realistic about the challenges while we're in the position that we are when it comes to taxes it's not because of profit government spending at the local level it has more so to do with value of properties in Richmond County we would be juxtaposed with property values in Charleston versus property values in Greenville thank you a few more minutes I'll let you go first since you have a hard stop we will continue to want to sell a little more time it's something that's here in your community to track the businesses that's the public safety and health services issues the mayor he's not just today I'll let you start I'll tell you then the mayor so make him tell me what's the question I'm just talking about the status of public safety how are you involved in your staff with PTO and officers on payroll all the well the mayor I would say probably more directly involved with public safety than I am because he has a police chief that reports to him whereas I don't have the sheriff doesn't report for Richmond County council the sheriff is a constitutional elected office he runs the office just like I do and he is beholden to the voters and not Richmond County council you fund the sheriff's department I know for county council we take a pretty comprehensive approach of you when it comes to public safety it's not just the sheriff's department it's EMS it's the solicitor's office it's the coroner's office as well and so when I get asked questions what is your perspective for public safety in the county or if you think the county is safe or not you refer to the folks with such amount of expertise which would be the sheriff which would be the solicitor but if you would ask me the anecdotal sense no I don't feel unsafe in my own county I mean I've lived here for I'm 42 years old I've been here since 1986 1987 how many years that is but I do recognize that there are communities that are unsafe there are communities that are dealing with gun violence they are not just sat on a panel together with NAACP this past Sunday talking about that issue games I know in certain communities are an issue as well as illegal drugs so we know that crime is an issue in Richardson County it's a problem nationwide but what we try to do is make sure that we support the sheriff's department we support the solicitor's office we support EMS we support the coroner's office we ensure that there is adequate funding I think I said earlier the sheriff's department comprises nearly a third of the entire county budget well county budget for fiscal year 24 is just over 200 million so you all do the math on that and you can sort of glean from there county council is committed to public safety but I don't think it's sufficient to be I guess tough if you will you gotta get tough on the cause of the crime and I think the best anti-crime program goes back to economic development it's a jobs program I think if you can put people to work engage in workforce development make sure they have educational resources there provide the jobs pay a livable wage people less likely to be involved in criminal conduct children who grow up in homes economically stable less likely to be involved in criminal activity or behavior that's the approach of county council it's taking to make sure that we're paying our deputies well in fact we allocated three million dollars out of our funds to increase pay for our entire public safety apparatus two million of that will go towards the sheriff to the solicitous office Richland county EMS I think some will go to the coroner's office as well we also are implementing a four percent cost of limit adjustment for this upcoming fiscal year that would be the second cost of limit adjustment well for all of our county employees but the sheriff's department and other public safety agencies that would be twice now over the course of one year and so those are the things that we're doing to make sure that our community is safe and that it remains right for economic development and that we have a community that where people feel that they can safely live work and thrive thank you we'll say Paul for our mayor and our respondents and thank you chairman Walford for joining us today we'll be here on time thank you question but you can also focus on your press conference yesterday that should be put in place how does this popular population downtown take our view for the fiscal and see who's not just your head following the plan so you know public safety is the number one issue that we deal with everyday and I'll tell you every time I go to bed I hope that my phone doesn't ring because one of the things I'm scared about everyday in our community is somebody else being shot by our prime is as I said coming back from the U.S. conference of mayors there wasn't one conversation that we didn't have but believe it or not some of the policies and the things that we are trying in the community to make it natural one of the programs that was handed on in the mayors press conference I didn't know what was going to happen but they pulled Columbia South Carolina and talked about our handle with care it's our program where officers work with the school system to let them know that a child has been involved in a violent crime or seen it or been part of it in their neighbor so they can plan to have the counselors and everyone in there working with them to get there public safety we got a crisis folks on our police officers folks are not lining up to become police officers anymore we have a shortage so we're having to be creative because we can't continue to poach from each other in that area we can't have people going from the county back to the city and into the department of corrections we're just recycling so we're doing everything that we can today to recruit we've stabilized we've increased funding we've invested in technology and training we're using a lot of technology but we're also bringing in private security to help to handle property crime for us false alarm calls things like that so that our officers can't focus but there are more tools out there for us to use that we can keep our officers focused on major crimes speed cameras and red light cameras you don't think it's a big deal but an average officer when he shows up to an accident it's an hour and a half of this day so if we can eliminate that think about the time and it's different the sheriff doesn't have to deal with accidents he doesn't have to deal with homeless he can focus on crime our guys spend downtown corridor and this is why we're looking at private security to take a role in it so we took the hotspots 911 and looked at 70% of our calls in that area have to do with paid crime drunkenness addiction problems property crimes we're sending multiple resources so we have to deal with the hotspots but we have to invest so we're announcing in the next two weeks we're bringing forth candidates for the office of violence prevention to have a quarterback somebody who's got a long history in this field to work with our youth bring all these groups together to start to help do the three things we know so we know people places and behavior it's about 1% square mile distance of our community and focus on those hotspots so we can put in prevention intervention and law enforcement putting crisis teams we've hired five pathway units these folks are clinicians they come through the department of health they'll work with our officers to deal with the crisis both in our unsheltered population and our non-population we're building up crisis teams to work to start to get into their friendship but we also have another challenge our judicial system is not working for us folks the 11 kids who were shot the shooters that already been arrested three times in a 60 day period before that with the good and unlawful weapon it is a revolving door we can't get our neighborhoods to support our police department because they're afraid that those people by the weekend will be back in their neighborhoods we've got to change the narrative and by doing that by continuing to invest in our of course try unique recruiting but addressing the problem working with our communities changing our conditions livable conditions we can't go back in our neighborhoods I spent the weekend this weekend riding around I rode 278 miles across the city I went to every neighborhood that was in the city of Columbia just to see what's going on what are the kids doing what are our neighborhoods doing what are the challenges that we need to be looking at real time challenges we're investing in lighting fixing our sidewalks cleaning up things like limbs those are safety issues that create but we got to get our community together back to clean up we're tackling our landlords and I say this because our most vulnerable population has been left with nobody fighting for the Columbia apartment had 157 calls for service last year and we all know what we've heard about the crime and the shootings but what you don't know what you may not know is that during Christmas for four days an entire community had no heat and no water and the only reason any of us find out about it is because somebody got shot and killed and when the police arrived the neighbors started talking they felt so we need them like their neighbor's leaders so yes we're fighting with HUD we're suing the owners we're doing everything we can to go after because we've got to change the conditions and that's part of why tax modernization is important we need people making investments and new quality housing so that we can put people in the housing we need to show people how they can get into home ownership and cost out situations we don't need 300 unit apartment complexes we need smaller unit singles we need our community to work together with us is this a community issue volunteering and being in people's lives every day not just showing up once a month and then going to church on Sunday and Saturday there's groups like pray columbia and love columbia they're aligning up volunteers to make the effects of these communities so we're looking at this public safety from all angles it's about investing in our children in early prevention job creation we're working with Christy Savage we created a skilled working center now you can go get trained for HVAC and electrical work right here at our incubator we're building a neighborhood incubator in the Brooklyn Washington Heights civil place that the city's funding where neighborhood nonprofits and startups have the ability to have space when they have access to the internet and copiers of things so they can build up themselves and have an opportunity we're working with the state to get funding we've gotten close to four million dollars to build a community center in the gymnasium in a neighborhood that has nothing to give these kids an opportunity to be investing in our parks and our parks programs we're working with every opportunity there is out there so it's not just about police recruitment but it's also about working on the judicial system it's working about how we build up the quality of life for individuals with better housing showing people a path for opportunities creating more opportunities for kids we've got to show people that there's a different path than violence violence prevention should be our number one thing domestic violence at 31% on the internet shootings up 18% 118 shootings last year 93% of those shootings were young males within the ages of 18 and 20 there were more jobs available than there ever is but we've got to show people that they can get those jobs and show people how they do the interview how they prepare themselves to get those jobs so as we talk about public safety we're doing the things you all know about but there's a lot of things we're doing to change the opportunities out there and show people there's a different path so just remember prevention, intervention and law enforcement are three avenues and let's focus more on prevention and intervention then law enforcement because putting somebody in jail is not solving the problem either Thank you Mayor, we appreciate your time today right around the ball for Mayor