 My name is Katrina Norbell and I am an assistant professor here in the MPA and MS leadership program and we want to welcome you to our 10th public service and leadership conference. Number 10. It's my pleasure now to introduce you to my colleague, Dean Dr. Michael Hall who is going to direct our program today and give you some information about what we've been doing over the last 10 years and welcome everyone. Dr. Hall. Thank you Dr. Norbell. Welcome everyone. We're so pleased that you're all here with us for the 10th anniversary of the public service and leadership conference. You know we started this whole process largely because I got a letter or a call. I don't remember exactly which from the national office in Washington D.C. from ASPA saying if you don't do something we're going to take your money away. And I turned to my then assistant Anne Wolf-Lawson when we have an ask-match after her. She said well yeah. Well nobody told me. So we began putting together some events and trying to be busy and it really got underway in about 2009 or so as our anniversary logo indicates. And what we were trying to do was integrate the MPA and ultimately the MS in leadership programs into RYASPA since it was centered at Roger Williams. And we tried to then make themes to develop for each conference. And eventually what happened was those themes started to involve the Pawtucket High School Academies. Now that was largely because of the gentleman sitting to my immediate right. Michael Connelly. Mr. Connelly would you stand for a moment. It was Mr. Connelly's brain child to create the academies and use federal money, Carl Perkins money to do it. And we started having the students come to my classes in the beginning and ultimately I said you know Michael we need to get these folks really more involved and so we began to design some projects for them to do. They began to be part of the ASPA conference that we have every May and they're here this afternoon or this morning ladies and gentlemen can you acknowledge. There they are. So about 2015 we began to focus more on themes and we have done themes such as innovation. The students from the academies did community asset mapping. I even had one year the students use the software called SketchUp to redesign their classrooms to be more interactive and to yield a better learning environment for them. That was all kinds of STEM work. The students have recently done posters and we have a poster presentation for us from them later this morning. Now none of this of course could happen without the assistance of a number of people and I'd like to recognize if we could Dr. Katrina Norvell is right here. Dr. Norvell is a creative person and she really has helped redefine some of our themes over the years and we welcomed her in 2015, 2013. I'm an old person I forget. As soon as last year's conference was over Lee Koo immediately began working on this year's conference and we wouldn't be sitting here without Ms. Koo. Here she is. There are countless hours that she's put in. She's done work on the weekends overnight. She has been the real spark plug to make this thing work. So Lee thank you very very much. I'd like to recognize a very special guest. Without whom much of what we do wouldn't be possible. They have provided support in ways that when we started this back in the 2008, 2009, whenever it was I could not imagine. I'd like to recognize the current president of ASPA National Dr. Paul Danzik. Dr. Danzik comes to us from the West Coast so he flew in yesterday and it was a long trip but he's here. This marks his third visit with us and we are so pleased that he comes. He has been more than supportive throughout the last three years when he's come to our conferences. I also want to recognize William Shields Jr. known to most of us as Bill. He's a native Rhode Islander you know. That is fortuitous for us because that made one of the connections that Mr. Conley and I were able to work with him on to get some work done with the academies. A person who has set a record now for the number of visits she's made to Rhode Island both as president elect and president and she's no longer president but she keeps coming because she's supportive and she believes in what we do. Ladies and gentlemen, Janice LeChance. I've asked all three of those folks to make some remarks later about our theme so I'm looking forward to that. 1230 issue Ms. Koot. A long time friend of the program is my good buddy Dr. Archie Morris. Dr. Morris has come to these since we started back in 2008 and he's been a loyal supporter and he's always been helpful. He's even made presentations for us even though he's retired. He keeps coming and we're very appreciative of his support for us. Now we will be hearing shortly from our keynote speaker but I thought we might take a look at her before she begins. Serena Breeling. More about her soon. But importantly this morning we have a very special guest. She and I go back to the 150 Washington Street location back in 2010 or so and she was as friendly and delightful as she is right now and has always been helpful to us and her career has moved her into the public sphere. She is a public servant now and she is Secretary of State Nelly Gorbea. She is a record-setting individual. She is the first Hispanic woman elected to state wide office in New England. She's a proven leader taking on tough issues and getting results. She was re-elected to serve a second term in the office of Secretary of State November 6th, 2018. As Secretary of State she has promoted increased civic engagement and government accessibility. Her involvement with civic engagement connects directly to our conference and we are pleased to have her here to give us some remarks. Ms. Gorbea. Thank you Dr. Hall. It's a good morning. Good morning. It's wonderful to be here with all of you here at the ASPA and greetings of course to President-elect Paul Danzik and also to Executive Director William Shields. Thank you for inviting me. Let's give a round of applause to this amazing leader Dr. Michael Hall. Every gathering needs a good organizing leader who's doing a fantastic job as Director of the Masters in Public Administration Program at Roger Williams University. You know I'm particularly pleased to be with all of you here because as a fellow MPA-er and somebody who actually did public policy in her undergraduate degree, you know I feel that we share a bond. That we share something that, let's face it, our other colleagues that went to law school, that went to business school, that went to other programs. They don't have what we have in terms of this real deep down commitment to making government work for everyone. That you know I remember going from my undergraduate years to my, to when I figure out where I was going to go for graduate school and yeah I looked at law school. I actually, I think I took the LSATs twice. I looked at business school for about five minutes and then said no, that's not really how I want to see the world. I want to look at it from the point of view of making government work for everyone and how it's structured and how we can make changes. And so that's why actually I ran for Secretary of State eventually and why I'm excited, super excited about your theme this year of civic engagement. You know the people in this room know better than probably many others how important it is to get Rhode Islanders or anybody involved with their government. It changes the way things work and the biggest battle that we have is against this ongoing message from the media from all sorts of places that your participation in government doesn't really matter. It does. It absolutely doesn't. You all are looking at case studies in your work that show how it does. For example, for me being in public office has really allowed me to do things like eliminating barriers and improving access to the ballot box with legislation and creating online and automated voter registration because people can't vote if they're not registered. And so how do you make it easier for people to actually do that? For you high school students here in the back. You know those laws might help some of your own peers and we talked a little bit before the breakfast, I mean before the speaking program started about online voter registration. I know you're all on your phones. I've got a couple of teenagers at home. Before I got elected you pretty much had to either go to a desktop or you had to print out a form and fill it out. I've had young people look at me with like what's a PDF? Or how do I send this in? I mean what are those blue boxes on street corners? If we don't change the way government works then we are basically leaving people out of democracy. And so I do want to give a particular shout out to the students and to the teachers and the staff over at Shea and Tolman High Schools for being the only high school in the nation to become members of the ASPA. Let's give them a big round of applause. And this is a really active bunch. I had already talked to a few of them in my office. I had some of the Tolman High School students come with their teacher Tim Howe. They had ideas on how the activity book that the Department of State puts out could be improved to incorporate math into the structure of it. And I said you know we in our office were pretty good. We hadn't thought about that and thank you for bringing that forward. And yeah we're going to actually do that. We're going to incorporate math now into the activity guide that is about history and civics because we hadn't thought about the STEAM approach and when we put that together. And that would not be happening had it not been for students at Pawtucket High Schools that came forward and brought that forward. And you know this is a really active generation. In fact they're definitely making their voices heard. In Rhode Island alone there was a 64% increase in voters ages 18 through 20 compared to the 2014 election. Something that gives happiness and hope to my day. And I hope that your peers will continue this momentum because we absolutely need those young voices. And while the future is really bright you can also look to our past for civic engagement. And so one of the things that I've been doing as Secretary of State is to increase the visibility of our state archives in those archives. And we have almost 400 years of documents of how government was structured in the beginning here. We have examples of how Rhode Island general Rhode Island citizens have changed the course of history. And so for example this Saturday May 4th, for those of you from out of town, May 4th is actually the anniversary of the act of renunciation. Rhode Island not anywhere else. Rhode Island was the first colony to renounce allegiance to the king of England. So whatever you hear it or read in other boards elsewhere, that's not how it started. It started here in Rhode Island. And so our state archives are that place where you can look at the act of renunciation, you can look at these things. But we're the only state in the country that doesn't have an actual facility for these amazing records. And so I'm on a mission to bring an actual Rhode Island state archives and Rhode Island history exhibition center to our state, right across from the state house. And so I hope all of you will join me in encouraging your legislators and the governor to find us a real home for these. Because we really can't move forward without learning from our past. We can't move in an effective way. So thank you very much to all of you. I have a really wonderful productive day and I'm looking forward to seeing some of these students back in my office again and keep giving me these great ideas. Thank you so much. Now, Ms. Gorevea, before you take off, and I know you're busy, but after a special vote, the members of ASPA and the board have made you a member of the American Society of Public Administration. Thank you. Thank you so much. I've got to say that the American Society of Poor Public Administration was founded on much of the theme that Secretary of State Gorevea just touched on. And some of the words that she used were exactly in my head when I thought, what should I do with my career? And it was, I want to make government work better. She said, make it work for everyone. But I think I would not be out of line if I said the founders pretty much had that same sort of thing in mind in 1939. Now, I want to make another recognition or two. I think this is important since they were definitely involved in this theme and putting together the program for this year. I'd like to ask the members of the current Rye ASPA board to stand as I call your name please. Vice President Katrina Norvell, Treasurer LeCoup, who is in and out. Aaron Chesky, Council Member, George Labonte, Council Member, Christopher Pierce, and Sasha Zapata. These are the long-serving Council Members added this spring. Alexi Brown, she's still at the desk. Linda DeMorenville and Ryan Sherry, please help me thank and welcome all of them. And now, for the keynote speech. A year ago when we were discussing as a Council who would be the keynote address for the civic engagement theme, before I could say anything else, the name Serena Breeland was mentioned at the Council table. Serena is currently the City Manager of Flugerville, Texas. Ms. Breeland has a Bachelor's of Business Administration from Stephen F. Austin University, Fate University in Nacogdoches, Texas. She has a Masters of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Dallas. She, of course, is a Texan. I think you will find that she and I share the Texan kind of, what's the direct approach? We say rodeo, not rodeo. I don't know what they say. We say rodeo. Ms. Breeland has actually been in the academic field despite the fact that she tries to not acknowledge that. She's taught government, economics, and world history at the high school level in Garland and Mesquite, Texas. She began her career in local government in 2003 as the City Manager of Green Bull, Texas, as we said back home, not Greenville, Green Bull, Texas. She was named one of the top five public servants in 2012 by the Victoria Advocate-based recommendations for community leaders. And I could go on and on, but among the things I would do in the on and on is she goes to Oklahoma football games and sits on the 35-yard line in a chair-back seat. Ladies and gentlemen, my new, good friend, Serena Breeland. Wow, 10 years. Quite an accomplishment. Dr. Hall is running an amazing organization here. I'm so proud to be here. The people in this room, I know you've all been recognized, but I tell you that I came in yesterday. My first time to Rhode Island, and so if anyone couldn't, she left, but I could in an honorary Rhode Islander, I think. I heard from this table that you'll say the word, I say go. I'm going to say go about 50 times today. But I heard you say use. Is that correct? Use? I don't know what you're saying now. But I'll work on it. So today I ask you to take what you like and leave the rest. I'll talk a little bit about my journey. I've learned that, so I'm going to change up a little bit today, but I want to share with young people in the room a little bit about my journey in becoming a city manager. I know that when I sat in the high school classroom, I never thought, gee, I think I'm going to be a city manager. That never crossed my mind. And as I know as a young person that I love public service, et cetera, it's been able to be a transition that I wasn't able to make. It didn't know about when I was in high school, made that transition later. So I can't really talk about that. I got to Hall in Lee, where's Lee? Lee, amazing. I met Lee last year with Chris Pierce when we were in Denver and just put Rhode Island on the map for me. They said, who's ever come to Rhode Island? I said, yes. And I thought they were, I just really dismissed it. And I'm like, well, we're going to have you, and I thought, oh, that's cute. And then so many months later, here we are having a conversation. So thank you. For Paul for being here, thank you. That's an amazing journey. Bill, the work that you do as executive director is amazing. Janice, the work that you've done for years, I'm very grateful for what y'all do and Archie, thank you for being here. For the people that I met from Cassidy, Ms. Plain again, I know that it will be honoring you today, and I'm so thrilled. Where did Josh go? Josh? Remember, in your new journey, that you get to tell people, boy, it's so good that we're here to fix your problems. When you talk to those residents and you know, I am fortunate to be able to serve. I hope that you do a great job and that you're welcome. For my table, thank you for putting up with me for the last very minutes. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. So Ms. She left, but I'll tell you, she gets it. You heard it. You heard where we meet people, where they are. She gets it. Don't be grateful for having someone that's elected that gets that. I think that's very important. Now she said that Rhode Island was the first to renounce allegiance. I would just tell you, Texas has renounced allegiance to anyone. Like very much anyone. So I decided that when she spoke about that, I thought I should make a museum of some sort that says Texas should be its own country. That's what we believe in Texas. I just want to put that out there that you have renounced allegiance for. So congratulations, Rhode Island. But I tell you, when you just tell everybody to go take a hike, you're a Texan. Michael, your work with the academies is jaw dropping. I have nothing like it. I started my career as a high school teacher. I wanted to teach government. As more I got into it and realized at the local level, they really only talked about everyone's state where I was. There was no local government. So I gathered all my students and we went to the city council meeting. Went to the city council meeting at two o'clock in the afternoon and my students were appalled by it. They said, how do the working people, you know, how are they able to do this? So I allowed one of them to be public comment, because otherwise it's like open mic night, you know. And so the students went up and they spoke about that. The inability to reach residents today in this heat Texas, their meetings are in meetings. It's amazing what a group of people do. What you've done is absolutely remarkable. So thank y'all for being here. Kind of, I have to have a, you know, you'll have to hold my hand. You know that, right? Well, we say howdy in Texas. So if I say howdy, would you say howdy Venice? Howdy! Thank you very much. That's what we do. I'll tell you, being the presence of all of y'all, it really works on hard. But I'll tell you more importantly, that you've got to be all excited to talk about civic engagement. There's probably two other topics that I'd like to talk about more, and that would be tacos and music. And what's great about community engagement is that I usually get to bring in tacos and music. So this makes me very, very excited to be here. And you'll help me do things? Yes. That's right. So I'll tell you a little story. I'm the daughter of a retired full-bird colonel that was a chaplain. So if you understand what that means, I'm half creature's kid and half army brat. But that means we're young people with 20 years of therapy. That's what ends up happening. When you have a father, but if you come home late, and my father would say drop him in a 20 and ready to King James. And that was kind of, that's what we did in my household. And being a common Texan father, my father bought me a 22 rifle when I was 10 years old. I really think he bought it himself, but we're just going to say that he bought it for me for the sake of the story. My grandfather had a ranch in Farmersville, Texas. Yep, that's the name of it. Farmersville, Texas. So in Farmersville, Texas, we would put up the beer cans from the night before a rifle in Grandpa. And so while he's left it off, we put the beer cans back on events. And my father decided to teach me how to shoot a 22 rifle. And in doing so, my father's a very meticulous man. Very, very meticulous. We, you know, we had to make our beds every morning, et cetera. That's why I asked my parents to buy me one of those trouble beds, and you just roll it out and roll it back in. So I was, I was an engineer. I had good ways of doing things when I was younger and pretty smart on having some of those corners. So my father takes me out to shoot my first hand. Very meticulous in his training. You raise a firearm, how you breathe, how you sign it in. He even talks to me about the ethics of if you shoot something that is living, what would you do then, and have a plan. And I just secretly remember being terrified. Just absolutely being terrified of us. So I finally, he kneels down next to me. I raise that firearm and I go to shoot it. Side it in. I'm breathing. I'm doing everything right. And I remember I loaded that weapon and I said, Dad, man, I looked at it and said, I'm, I'm scared. And it looked at me and said, baby, you just do what's scared. And that's just one of those stories of shaping for then on that I realized that, what is it? We're born with two fears. Fear. Fear of that noises. Fear of unfollowing. And then we create how many fears we have. Am I scared of spiders? What, right? Monsters in the ocean. And all those fears that we do. Fear of public speaking. Fear that somebody's going to make fun of us. What are that fears? And I was telling my dad very early, very simple words and I said, baby, you just do what's scared of us. So I tell you, we all have the stories that shape us. I urge you to not focus on one story. I urge you to think about your life and a series of stories and how that shapes you. So do you have this working? Yeah. What is that movie with the clown guy? Uh, Batman and Spider-Man? Joker. Whenever he walks away from that hospital and blows it up. Anyways, I just realized this. Thank you. So a little bit about what I've done. CERN is a high school teacher. I recognized that I didn't want to be teaching government. I wanted to do government. I then did this huge leap of faith and just quit my job, sold my car, got roommates. I got a fourth focus. That's what you do. I don't remember. You buy a fourth focus and you go to your masters. When I was an ITA student, I had to share this with you. Usually us city managers are very apolitical. We don't take sides. In Texas it's a little difficult, but that's another story. So when I was doing my masters, I was about to finish in 2004. Before 2004, I had a sticker on my car. I have to admit. I had a sticker on my car. I don't know if you're being a mad or not, so I don't know. But I'm just going to share this with you years ago. I had a sticker on my car that said, Anybody but Bush 2004. That's what it said. One of the deans of the university saw it. Apparently he was hilarious. He ended up offering me an urban fellowship position. That's why it's always very dear for me. They ended up paying for school as a third and fourth focus. I got a job doing 20 hours a week for minimum wage. My career was about networking. My career was about making significant changes in organizations. So I started there, then I went and worked at the City of Ditten, and I was the recycling coordinator, but let me be clear. I worked at the landfill. We're supposed to say the sanitary landfill. I just called it a dump. And so I went from my masters to the dump. My parents were proud. It started my career also at a dump. I did meet Willie Nelson there and Ted Kennedy Jr. Anyway, it's other stories. Random, I know. Then I went to the city at a sugar land. If you know Texas, it's a large suburb. It's known to be a high-fluent area. So I was in sugar land. I was over at Facilities Fleet. Whatever the City Manager didn't want to do. So I had most random. And then just kept adding. At that time, my assistant city manager, Karen Dane, she works for ICME right now. She's in fun time. She tossed me out of the nest. And she said, you need to go be a city manager. And so I knew at that time, I knew Earl London was my home. And you said when I entered my masters. And so what you do in that career path is I took a $50,000 pay cut to go be a city manager. So I was a director at a large city. And then I went and found this little town called Goliad, Texas. If you look up Goliad, Texas, it's one of the strongest historical cities in Texas. And population is 1,700. So I was like the new shiny object in town. So I was like running a high school. So that's where I had to get a wastewater license and all sorts of stuff. Because literally when you were in town and you had nine employees, you become the animal control officer, the wastewater plant operator, literally had to get my wastewater license. All the things that I didn't learn in my masters, I learned in Goliad, Texas. Whenever T.C.Q., which is our regulatory show, I'm not exaggerating, my home on Christmas Eve didn't tell me that my wastewater operator was discharged from raw water into a river. It's really illegal, by the way. Like it's like a felony. And so, and I had to go buy a guy at his home on Christmas Eve and then, by the way, go get a wastewater license because somebody has to run it. There's a whole other story about bartering soup to pay a guy because I didn't have any money to train my people on how to take the test. We could go on for days. So Goliad, Texas was my first gig running a city and had a ball doing it. I didn't just catch any cities. What I've kind of been known for, I know the Austin Business Journal wrote an article about me recently, they call me a serial CEO. I don't know if that's good or not. What that means is that I'm highly known to go into cities and make some changes and then run away. Next gig, I think it's going to be Nicaragua. We can do Nicaragua. Sure, take it over. We can do Nicaragua. So the cat is, oh, thank you. So we're all taught in a program. I'm going to skip this. You don't know what you're taught in a master's program, right? Yeah, I know how that goes. I want to share a little bit about this. This bear is in different Colorado. Remember this bear? Anybody seeing this bear? I didn't see that bear. I was at a convention center. In 2002, I was teaching in high school and I went there to see a friend of mine graduate at law school. I'm inside a convention center. I see this bear. I see that bear. I'm on the third floor and it's doing this, right? Now this is before cell phones. I know table nine and ten don't understand that. But before cell phones, so I had to go play. We stay in Texas less than a little hard. That's what we say. So I end up running down and having some poor person off the street take a picture of me in 2002. I might say I look better now. But that's another story. But in 2018, I got to go back and replicate that. I'll tell you why this is important. Remember I talked about our story. I remember at that moment thinking to myself that all people, regardless of race, color, gender, socioeconomic, should have access to public art. That was a huge epiphany to me in 2002. Where I said, if I can do anything in a city, I want to make sure that they can see a blue bear. I want to make sure that they can engage in that at whatever walk of life or anything. You don't have to go to any museum to do it. When I got to go back to ASPA in March, I got to revisit my bear. And it was very moving for me that I got to see that. Because I'll tell you where I was in my master's shortly after this. I'm going to tell a story on a professor. Actually, who is the dean? When I was in school at the University of Texas, I had a professor tell me that I would never, ever be a city manager. I'm going to point out that I've done it four times now. And I think I'm not writing from a letter and I'm like, I hate it. I hate it. And I'm kind of telling you that. And he said he was a bad writer. Which probably, sure, because I hated class. I'm good with that. So I did go back, though. I went to my city manager at the time and I said, hey, I was told this. Oh my gosh, what do I do? You know, I really thought I'd be just figuring this out. I remember her telling me, she was like, come on, you're going to write back some memos, some press releases, some agenda items. You don't write in the white paper ever. Really, you don't have to. So I remember thinking, because I thought at that point of writing, you could join the circus. I really thought, oh gosh, I'm not going to do it. And I'll tell you that because I remember then thinking to myself, oh, oh, doctor, if you thought you were the first one to tell me that I couldn't, you've got to be kidding, right? So I took that to heart. And it actually empowered me. It became more of my story. There were times that I was your age that I was told I couldn't. And even in my master's told I was couldn't. It took three months ago being told I couldn't on things. A series of my life that says I couldn't do it. And I'll tell you, that was important to me to remember. And thank you for telling me that side story. His office may or may not have called me if he was going to ask for an interview. And I said, oh, you don't need to interview me more than I do, but thank you. So I said no, but that's just because that's just vindictive. So I talked about your story, but more importantly knowing your why. Knowing why you do it. I knew very young that I wanted to get a college servant. I knew that. I didn't know at what level. I knew that I wanted to care for and make the community great. I knew that. I didn't know what role that was. For me, I'm able to do it as a city manager. For you, you may be able to do it in many other ways. And the greatest part of being a city manager is I am good at not one thing at all. Terrible. Actually, it ain't one thing. What I'm really good at is being a conductor. What I'm good at is hearing when we're off and knowing our key and how to how to tune it. What I'm not good at is playing the flute. What I'm not good at is focused on one thing. So being a city manager for me, if any of you all suffer that ADHD like I do, then it's the greatest job ever. So any given day in eight hours, it's only topics. And it's just rapid fire. So I make a decent conductor and I believe the biggest part of being that conductor is that my greatest is being on the step away and drawing applause for those people. My greatest is also that I have to turn my back on the crowd sometimes. That sometimes that becomes tough. And turning my back and leading is what I believe I was called to do. And so being a conductor is what I get to do in that role. So know why you do it. I think that's very important. I'm never going to be a city manager or whatever. I can't wait to see them. I'll be good. I know where it is. But ain't totally you can't, right? So I believe that our number one goal as a leader, I'll say it in my top one is empowering people. We are not doers of deeds. We are powers of people. We don't just do deeds. So here's where I was told I can't. About three months ago, okay, so I'll tell you we're friends here, right? So I go up to work on Saturdays often and I notice in the background they're like these random trucks. Those trucks are pretty popular in Texas, right? But random trucks out there, and I called my police chief and I was like, hey, I don't know if there are any city holders trucks, like in my parking lot and nobody, you know, we're not open for business. And she's like, oh, she, by the way, I'll point that out. My police chief is a female of Texas. This is kind of a deal. We're the only city that has a female police chief in a female city manager. So we could cook and but they let us drive in Texas now. We can vote. I'm a gun at one city. She gets carry gun. It's pretty cool stuff. So I asked her, I said, hey, where are these trucks? And she said they were just left over from the bar next door and I was like, what? It's what happened. People will probably have a little too many Dr. Peppers and then I don't know Dr. Peppers. And then they read your truck. Well, then I realized it was just city owned property in between us and the bar. And what people do is they walk through this horrible dirt patch, you know, to get to their higher truck from their rise. So, um, and so I thought to myself, let's just make a really cool park. So I remember I brought it up at first with a couple of people and you will lead how people like to just say, you know, it's amazing. I love the wooden stairs. Actually, I have a poster on my wall of all the times people tell me I can't. Literally, I have a giant, I use government resources really well. So my big stairs made me a poster and I keep the line at every time somebody tells me I can't. It's a great thing. It's very empowering. So I said, hey, why do we do this? Well, we already tried that. Oh, good job. And so I got told we already did it. Cost too much money. What if? What if we build a new city home? What are you going to do? And so I got told a whole lot of what ifs. So I shared the picture of the two bears with myself. Because I believe that people need to know your story. That people need to know how you're going to answer something before the pressure is even asked. Because I believe that whenever people believe in you as a leader and believe in what you believe in, you're going to be able to do it. So I got told a lot of what ifs. And I named them, I actually in a portfolio I carry every day to work are those two bear pictures. They're in pair with me at all times. Reminding of my line is reminding of what I do whenever I think about public art and public space. A place where people can laugh, live, play, etc. So I shared that. I said, guys, people shouldn't access. We have the ability to do it. And then I was just typically walking through a process because I couldn't do that all day. Tell me what it looked like. So to tell you what they did, I played a little brief I would like to point out though that I laid on the ground for 13 hours on concrete and painted something. So if y'all ever want to see that and you find me afterwards, I didn't show it. But I'm sore. This was just this last weekend. So how do I play this little video? Y'all are looking at me like, ah, I hope she does it. Okay, here we go. Music, I want to run. I don't believe what they can do. I was able to do that. I had to take away like, oh, she thinks she's on that. It's really, it was like 10 sentences that I said. That was it. That's all I did. And my staff knocked this out of the park. We built that this weekend. We started Friday, Friday Saturday, and it's probably finished today. So I know the staff can do what and to watch. So I had about 400 employees and I gave them the day Friday to you can either go be an accountant or you can go work at the park. And y'all showed up. So I had an IT guy. He had a shirt on. It says, I'll cause my name for this. It's so, it's a good plan. I don't know. You can hang with them. But anyway, we showed up and got a bill bar. It was awesome. And then we asked the community to kind of help build it on on the next day on Saturday. And I'll tell you, I had people walking up to me saying, can I get married here? I was like, why do you thought sure? And then, you know, or it was like, can we can we rent it? No, we built it for you. You didn't have it. You didn't have any time to want. Well, can we drink here? And then, and then attorneys get involved. Which is the bane of my existence and always trying to get the needles. I got some attorney. I don't want an attorney. Because my homie says, well, one hand to the other hand. Get one arm, dude. Get one arm. And one arm. And so, you know, so I had to figure out how to get around the attorney and boozing in my closet. That's what I wanted. When I was in Guthrie, Oklahoma, I'll talk about Guthrie for a minute. It's an interesting place. It's a small town, about 10,000 population. Very progressive. Very art driven, very music driven. I'll show you later. We brought it in outing shapes. Femetic. Muffin and Sons. We did a festival. We brought in 35,000 people in a 10,000 population town. And me trying to tell my mayor that Muffin and Sons was coming, that was funny. So I was working at Dill. They wanted to bring me out in the year that year. And I'm working at Dill with a bunch of British guys trying to hide them in my city. So if you're in the town of 10,000, if you're the city manager, everyone knows you. Everybody tells you that's pot hole. I know about every loose dog on any blog. I'm talking about taking these people out to dinner with a British accent. It was not good. So the mayor at the time, I needed to finally tell him that we were bringing in Muffin and Sons. Which was really powerful. So I cued up on my computer a song. I was like, if I'm gonna be able to catch it, you have to keep it right. So I was like, hey, okay. So we're gonna do this thing. We're bringing all these people, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, we're bringing in Muffin and Sons. We're bringing in a little bit of education that you're using. It was like six months when we walked to anywhere in my town. They were playing Muffin and Sons music, you know? And by the time they got there, I was like, I'm done. Anyways. So what happened here is this wonderful shop owner graffiti the ground. And that's Lizzie. It is another old story. So Lizzie said that. Sorry. I've got a council member that calls me. Do I have the elected officials in the room Good. So the council really called me. She says, this is graffiti. You gotta go do something about it. Okay. So I went outside and I knew who did it. We know the whole group in a small town. So I went over to Shirley's place. Shirley has a really cool shop downtown. So I started talking to her about it. When my council member said, you need to do something about it. What she didn't know is what I did about it was just creating more. And so I didn't get rid of it. And we started to allow a whole lot of places. Here's where I kind of feel bad. I don't even talk about public art. You haven't really got it, right? What I will urge you to do in public art is allow people to do it that wouldn't normally do it. I would say that. I don't know if you'll do that or not, but what I've learned was allowing high school students to paint any traffic box they wanted. Whatever. Paint it. Hey, you know how people tell me no? Remember that story? I can't play. An engineer came and says, oh, you can't paint it. The box gets too hot. I'm done. Tell me no one more time and I'm going to do five more. That's what ends up happening. So I'm getting all sorts of notes. So every community. Anywhere that I see a wall the side of the library to, that's how a canvas. Let them do it. Let anybody do it. Yarn bombing is one of my new favorite things. If you can't sleep tonight. I want you to google yarn bombing. It kind of started in Austin. If you haven't seen it, it's really cool. So what you do is you, I don't know. They crochet stuff. I don't know. So the high school kids, we actually got them a grant that maybe had this machine that crocheted random. You could crochet a tank if you wanted to. Right? So crochet whatever you want. And then you just unleash the children. Just let them yarn bomb it. So we actually had them do it a lot at night so that people woke up on Saturday and the town was colorful. Let them do it. What I also love in Oklahoma were inmates. I learned really quickly. I can buy Gatorade in every flavor and pizza. And maybe some tobacco. I have a law enforcement bill with WGC. You can buy inmates anything. They work for me all day. So we paint. And then this guy right here he actually was my handyman at my house. It looks like Charles Manson but not as a facial tattoo. So what I learned is that if people are asked to do something in a community, we want to serve. They say that less than 1% of your community is engaged in the making of the community and the other 99% are the consumers. My town is 67,000. They say that I should have 670 people engaged in the community. I would agree with that. It's the same people at the Chamber. Everything I go to. And I think about that. And then there's some interesting research that says that cities that are in love with their city in other words you have community, engagement, extreme and high, do very well in performance and economic development. Think about that. In the city you perform better. Less than 1% is making that happen. How do you engage that to be an actual 1%? Maybe even a 2%. Let's get crazy. So this one I'm going to imagine. Have you ever heard of parking day? This is where we take a random parking space and turn it into a park. And yeah, that's me doing a ribbon cutting from a parking space. And this is back to letting people know your idea and then letting them run with it. All of these things are just stuff from my house. They would just crap out cold from the backyard and then brought it to work that day. So those are things that people want to engage in. So I remember I came friends with a coffee shop owner and he said, hey sweetie, we want to ride bicycles in the middle of the street. Okay, that's what the street is for. We know what street to do, whatever it is. But we want to dress up in costumes. And this is waiting for me to say no. Like they got some point like, okay, well can you get a police escort? We're going to ask the whole community to ride their bikes downtown on Friday nights. Okay, I'm still waiting. I'll give you that. And this guy is like, he says, well, we didn't want to show a movie at a city park. Well, that's when the tourney is getting long because you can't really show a movie because you have to have like a copyrighted moment. I said, how about this? I got a projector in my house. How about we show the movie at your place at the coffee shop? Because I'm not liable. And so I don't really care. So anyway, as they started doing that, so that's in every Friday night deal. When people come to you and say I want to do something for my community that engages people and has those people love their community, guess what your answer should be? Sure, we'll figure it out, right? What do a lot of people I think in the government like to do? How to say no. How to say, oh, well, what if? What if somebody wears an inappropriate costume, Serena? What if that happens? Art walks. Oh, here's what I love is off duty. No, not off duty. Life duty police officers. They don't have anything to do. So one dress up like an Easter Bunny. I'll give them something to do. I'll find something to do. Well, another community, too, that I get to do is that I have the opportunity to do. Right, my friend Josh, you got that? Is that I was able to go to an elementary school on Fridays and the kids would read to me. I don't want to do 30 minutes on a Friday. But for about three years I worked with a second grade class. They'd hopefully kept going on a new class. Okay, so for three years. And I remember reading once that Mother Teresa said that nothing that we do for others is truly altruistic. There's always intrinsic value, right? And what I learned from what I would say to serving others for that 30 minutes, what it really did was it empowered me to see things from a different line. It empowered me to see the world from a very different lens. And so being able to do that in a serve and what I learned quickly is having your employees have the opportunity to do that. So I just implemented a policy with my staff that says I want you to go serve in the community for 40 hours a year on City's money. I don't want you to go pay that trash. I didn't even do that. What I want you to do is engage. What I want you to do is be the Easter Bunny. What I want you to do is go see people and like Marbella said, you meet people where they are. And you go see them. Our employees and staff should be able to do that. That's what I believe. This is great. Remember the lady that drew Lizzie? She told me she says, hey, can I paint a giant British flag in the largest intersection downtown? So, guess what I said? Sure. Great idea. I don't know why people in Oklahoma wouldn't want a British flag painted on their windows. Okay, so Facebook did its thing and went crazy and that was almost fire. And what I learned is that people forget things really quick. Because here's what ends up happening. The town goes nuts. And then we brought 35,000 people to town. They quickly forget what that did in the economy of a small town. Oh, and I'll tell you, if you never know, if you can't find your firefighters at a festival and it's 100 degrees up, they're out here shooting people with water. That's what they're doing. There's a little wet shirt contest. Sometimes I just do that. Whatever police fire is doing, I don't want to know. I just turned that away. So that event is amazing. I'll tell you a funny story about that event. Because I don't want you to think that we didn't do a lot of playing for you. So maybe in a small town, remember? I have four jail beds. Four. I have 35,000 people coming down there. I come to the town that probably are going to be altered in mind some way. Probably, right? So it's kind of a concert. It's a festival. You have to spend an eye on a tent. Okay, so I got four jail beds. Two cells. I don't have that two girls single ways around here. Right, that's it. So we made some rules before it. We decided that in the state of Oklahoma you could detain people for up to eight hours. You know, pretty much without reason. Pretty much. And so we decided to make a timeout area. So if you were hammered and we thought you were going to cause harm to yourself or someone else, we would just ask you, would you like to go to jail or would you like to go to timeout? And so we made a timeout area by the stage. We had shade. And I had more fun watching the drums teach each other how to dance than I did at the show. And so I tell you, it was one of the greatest things ever. And it's back to finding out how to get to guests. So my sheriff of town, so we had sheriff's office for the county and city police, right? And my sheriff had a jail and he absolutely said to me, I'm not taking any of your people's with you. I mean, I was flat out told that I murdered somebody. We're not housing them. So we had to come up with a timeout tank, right? I remember one old boy, he probably woke up and he's like, I'm going to drink. He's like, what? Why am I in here? And I remember getting my coffee and said, well, sir, you lay down on the highway. And he's like, I was tired. I was like, yeah, why don't you stay right here and dance a little? So I think one of our town had that happen. And then as you know, the woman said it was uncommonly great behavior on part of the audience and co-operation on friends. And I'll tell you what, we ended up arresting six people that weekend. One of them came with the band, which is like, point that out. And we normally would arrest like 20 people a weekend. So we're arresting six for 35,000. I'm going to call it a win in my business, right? So for all the people out there that are like, oh, she's crazy. Trust me, it was six months of planning, six months of setting up a joint instant command, everything that we needed to do to make that party go well. We had a train that bi-procaded the city. That train was active. And I know I had 35,000 people probably drinking. And that was quite an issue that we dealt with. So it's not like we just throw parties. We throw really, really good planning parties. What that led to was every Friday night party and shut down streets, back to getting the yes. I had a list of ordinances in the city that basically would allude to not being able to do this. And I remember the day that I went to my city council and with 12 ordinances and said, y'all should just kind of get rid of these. Like, it was just so much fire. So being able to show those elected officials like, I get it that you think this is smart and ordinance, but you're prohibiting this. And what are you doing? You're prohibiting that community engagement and that love. Here's the thing, I can build potholes all day. I can spend millions doing potholes. People would call and complain about potholes, right? Seems to be a big deal. What I've learned is that if I build every single pothole in the community they still feel like mine's alright. They don't get excited. That doesn't create community engagement. That doesn't create people to love their cities. It's where you're going to put your money in the community I think is really important. So, where do we have our time, Ron? You're my timekeeper. You go. You just keep going. We got to eat. Oh, okay. But that was a free tour, you know. Oh, really. So, things that I do with my employees. Like I said, just remember back to, it's not me. It's the people that I get the opportunity to work with every day that carry this out. I don't actually do much. You know, I can do that, right? That's what I do. And so with them I'll tell you everything that I can do that's cheesy. Here's my former police chief. And one day, can we dress up like rednecks and do a 5K? Sure. Whatever. Sure you can. That's my current police chief. Anyways, just having a good time. What I believe in in my organization and organizations that I run is I start doing representative democracy with employees. So, we set up a lot of committees. So, I now have, oh, we put P-words in front of all F-words in Cougarville because it's P-F. So, all F-words get it. Like, I'm sure we're thinking festival, fantastic, fun, family, football. So, all of it's P.S. Firecrackers. And so, we have the Cougarville Committee. We have all sorts of P-words in front of F-words. And so, they do to do whatever they want to do. So, I tell them, like, okay, here's the deal, guys. You get like, I don't know, 14 hours a year on same time to party. So, do whatever you want. So, a few weeks ago we had Field Day. We had Field Day. So, Field Day is me getting completely sabotaged with about 100 water balloons is what ended up happening. I think that's why they did the event is to attack me. But it's about empowering your people all the time. Here's the thing, guys. If you aren't intentional about being that leader at whatever level you are, who else is? Who else is doing that? Who else is being intentional about how we communicate to each other and how we get our communities to engage and to love each other? And I believe that's at all levels. I believe that you can be the intentional leader and make those things happen. Once again, that's all I do. Well, I do force things. Like, this was a former police chief, and I just called him and said, you have to dress up like an elf. And he did. And then I dunked him. I find him terrible, actually, my employees. What do you think, Deputy Chief? Okay. Okay, probably not. I started doing carpool karaoke with my current chief, but here's our problem. We don't know the words to any songs. It's only over on Facebook. They're just, it's awful. It's actually a terrible idea. So I tell you, I have a whole lot of really bad ideas. Some of them stick. My secretary says, Serena, on any good day, you can put about seven of the ideas and one is good. I'll take it. I'll take the one, right? So keep coming up with those, right? You'll find ones that stick. I experienced hurricane Harvey. I don't know our failure. With Harvey that happened, okay. So Harvey was a little over a year ago. I was serving on the coast. When I was with you, my home was on the water and it took in about 10 feet of water. So my first war went completely submerged. The way that I left my home was staying on my balcony and stepping over my rail into a boat and going to work at the emergency operation center. And I say that, not for something, I say that because I'm going to talk about that in a minute. So my life got really rocked during that time. But what are we supposed to do as leaders? We empower the others. We put that mask a little bit on ourselves, look at the home, say I got to leave it, and then go take care of your people. What happened was my community and my staff, the time I probably had about 250 employees, probably a quarter of them were living out of hotels. Their houses were demolished. I had a picture of one of my employees that was on top of his roof with his wife and his three kids and his dog waiting for a rescue and washing that water and getting up to the gutters. He showed up to work 12 hours later and work 24 hours shifts for the next week. It was amazing what people would do when colleges serve. So whenever the newspaper, and I got day five, I was a little cranky. The newspaper called me and rubbed and I lost it a little bit and I said, look at my people. Look at who's here, look who's serving. Don't tell me we did something wrong right now. They don't let me be the PIO very often because I say terrible things to the media. But with that, what I realized about three weeks into it, they're tired. They're broken. They are dealing with lost cars. They're dealing with unbelievable things. And so what happened was, this is fantastic, the custodial staff didn't show up. It's just crazy. You picture an entire 200 miles just completely devastated. And so I didn't have a custodial staff and there was a dead cricket. He's actually right there. There was a dead cricket in the city hall and one of my employees put a little sign up and it said this cricket is dead or I'm dead, please pick me up. And I go to the bathroom and I see this sign and I am rolling. Like rolling. I'm like, we need to have a memorial for the cricket. Yeah. And so we ended up, that's me in my form, we had flowers, we had candlelight vigil. And so at the city hall we decided and we wrote an entire obituary for them. And then, I mean, we did crime tape, the cops went nuts and we decided we did a full eulogy of Jimmy. Jimmy with cricket, he recipes. And then the cops had to spin it and the cops said he was a known criminal and so then people weren't as excited about it. It was a whole ordeal. And so, I mean, I'm at the store at 6 a.m. buying flowers for a stupid cricket, right? And so why I tell you that story it's about being intentional and your people are hurting how to bring them out. I noticed on some of my employees that post on Facebook it is the funniest thing they've ever done at work, right? And at times when they're hurting it is our job to pick up images of the court. So that was Jimmy with cricket. So I often stay awake thinking what could I do in a city, right? So soon, my family signage. When I walked into a city of Guthrie, Oklahoma there were these signs up that had a beautiful downtown. It's the largest historic downtown actually in the United States. It's stunning. But we had all these signs up that probably attorneys made. And what they said were no skateboarding, no bicycling, no fun we'll execute you order 4.8, section B, whatever distributed signs, right? And so the first annual is taken down. In my community, what do I want people to see? The first word ain't no. The first word is going to be yes and we'll do it. And so when I see signs that say no public restrooms, I'll go give a story on my news sign and be like, well, the restrooms are located mainstream and board. Because I don't want to know in the all over the city. So we dropped all those signs and then painted on the ground because I went and said, like a good policymaker that I am. I went and said, why don't we have a state-of-the-art signs where everybody looks terrible? And the staff is like, well, the skateboarders are terrible skateboarders. And so I was like, well, if I'm a skateboarder I'm not going to look up in the air about 10 feet. I'm going to look at the ground because that's probably where my face is actually planted. So we ended up doing signs on the ground. My favorite goes this one. That's in Seattle. Do not drive your cigarette butts on the ground, fish caught, and not just smell them. And we're trying everything to quit. So we started doing some funny signage signs in Riverville as well. This is one of my favorites. Those are just, that's in Seattle. I actually sat and watched that, I took that picture and I sat there and watched people walk over it, just sat at a bench because I love watching how people engage in space. And people would try to start dancing. They have no idea how to do it, right? And then what happens? Their buddy starts filming it so they put it on Snapchat, right? Because we've got a, you know, document everything we do in society now. And so, you know, they did that. But here's one thing that's an economic development side. I could drive by that. Sometimes you see something new and you're like, I'll put that on a list of it later. But if I'm walking in, I'm going to stop and I'm not going to that store. I'm engaged for a lot longer time. So, you know, put something. You own it. You as a city own it. You own that sidewalk. Do whatever you want with it. Paint it, put some dance steps in it, whatever you want. Now, my traffic guys are a little mad at me right now because I wasn't going to do that. And then cops have to come and tell me, wow, and then the attorney shows up. So we'll be doing the same thing. We'll be working on it. What else can I do? The yard bomb. I love it. So, this eyeball is in Dallas, Texas. The artist was at Chicago. And I run an art bomb. He's a very quiet man. And he just, I remember his exact words were, he said, like everybody's amazed by it. It's a really big eyeball. It's like the mayor, right? And every time I go to Dallas, I am that cheese ball that makes people pull over and let me go look at the eyeball. It is absolutely inspiring for me. And so I look at this eyeball. It's technically I'm a private property. It's a private home. But what happened there? Businesses started developing around the Y because a whole lot of people got involved with the eyeball, right? I'm not the only one. It's like touching the beam in Chicago. And so we create space so that people can look at it. That eyeball, my staff knows I can't take big eyeball. Go bigger. Go much bigger than what we think of. You can put a giant tube eyeball in the middle and it will leave the impact it has on the community. I do love that eyeball. I'm working on this. I gotta put that somewhere. I'll close a little bit. I had stories all day, but I'll tell you. You as public servants, what I do, I've been doing this about 15 years a little before that in teaching. We don't burn out because we, um, we don't burn out because, um, sorry, I'm so sorry guys. I got a little emotional. I love what I do. I love this. Y'all are going to be amazing. Public servants don't burn out because of what they do. They burn out because we forget why we do it. Know your why. Know that one story does not determine who you are because it's series of stories. Shake that. Share your message. People want to hear it. Leadership is all about engagement of relationships. Know your why. Tell your story. People want to hear it. And I'll tell you always, do it scared. And come to Texas for a free house. As we say back home, hot. Damn. I told, uh, I told everybody after meeting her last night that she was a spark plug and you boy oh boy. Um, there might be people in this room old enough to remember the In Search of Excellence movement in the in the 80s. It was led by a guy named Tom Peters and he used to go around telling people to do what Serena has just been describing. He quit. He quit doing it. And he quit doing it because nobody would listen. Listen to the woman. Now, Q and A. Sir, thank you. Questions for city manager Breyland police. Ms. Flurry. I wanted to know, what's the origin of that for you? Um, it wasn't Tom Peters, was it? Yeah. So, um, I'll say, I grew up in a we all go back to our roots, right? We all have those stories. So, mine was about a father that I was an athlete program. I mean, relatively, you know, getting a couple pounds, whatever. But, um, whenever I played baseball, volleyball, basketball, those were my sports. And about second grade, my dad used to run a baseball team. And I remember showing up. And I was like, I only won with pigtails, right? So, I am the one female. I never thought about that. So, about three years ago. I was like, did they just let me on that team? And he was like, oh, no, I threatened people. And so, yeah, I had people paved the way for me before I knew they were paved in it. And I realized quickly that I needed to pave that way. I started a committee called the Unbeatable Committee. I went and asked my organization, what's the top 10 things you would change about the organization, which is a scary question to ask. Be prepared for what they tell you. Be prepared to make change, right? My organization came back with about 275 things that changed about the organization. I was a little terrified. And I created a committee called the Unbeatable Committee. And I said, no managers allowed. I had the most beautiful story of a meter reader. He came up to me and I asked if he'd be on it. See, I'm an African American man that I see potential in. But I don't think he sees it himself. And I said, I want that man on that committee. I didn't really know him. He shows up to the first committee meeting and I'm there and he says, he pulls me aside. And I noticed he changed his clothes. He got out of his city uniform and he put on a Sunday vest. And he walks up to me and he says, hey, I want to get a picture with you, very mild. So, sure, we'll do that. We'll take a picture. He says, no one has ever asked me to get a table. Nobody's ever asked me to do something like this. And I want to show the picture of my family because I'm so proud. When you have the ability to do something as simple as put someone on a committee and watch them shine, that empowerment is beyond fulfilling. And what you're doing is creating. So I'll tell you, my origin would probably be people did it for me. And I'm going to give that back. I had another gentleman I'll tell you real quick. I started a benefits committee. Once again, no supervisors. My fleet mechanic leads the committee. He was chosen by the committee. I have a fleet mechanic come into my office and they gave me their top 20 things they wanted to do. And he went through them. And again, so I have never been asked to do anything to turn wrenches. And he's setting policy for the organization on insurance benefits. Ignore your ego. Here's what we do. 10% of the organization are superstars. The ones that you go to over and over to do things, because they're going to do it. What do you do? And then you've got 10% that are body dwellers that just need to be fired, right? So you've got like top 10 body attendants. What's your 80 doing? Go attack them, empower them. And what's stronger organization than wearing out your 10% and then spending all your time doing the 10% that's what I would say. All the HR people would look at it. Anyone else? Serena? Yes? Ms. Bergadamo? So speech reminded me of and just how forceful and positive the main character was and how much change you could enact that way. On the opposite side of that picture are the lawyers who are there largely to protect you. Yeah. Essentially they're protecting you from litigation and there's always a couple of crack-ups that you don't know about. So how how do you deal with the crack-ups? I've sat in federal court for nine days on a case on water. I've sat in district court against one of my prosecutors. The council member sued the city. I was the defendant for the city against my boss. So did that not come home but that was a joy. She believed that the right of the people was to vote on how much their water bill was. I agree with that. So I think for me, when it especially is legal my city attorney all the city attorneys I've had are very close and they get me and they're just going to give they're going to tell me I should make fun of them so much they're pretty good with me on saying here's your libel of getting sued and if you get sued how much is it? I can just say that but that's the risk that you take is calculated risk or everything that we do. I mean I constantly get asked where can we get sued? Well we don't really get sued that often on little stuff it's big stuff like who serves water I mean about a million dollars bill if I get sued on but when it comes to HR yeah I've had oh gosh 15 suits sure, I mean I can get real scared and not move the needle and if we all said we're scared to do something and it goes back to my daddy's day scared, figured it out I sat in a meeting the other day I was a little disheartened I've only been there eight months at this city and I didn't even mean to go there that's a whole never story I was asked to interview and I told him no for about five months but the council members will tell you I was actually really mean to them I called them names actually I said they were ineffective, they pontificate and all the people that watch their meetings are your wives I said that in an interview I said that and then they said well we know that you didn't want to be here to worry here now and our response was because you need me for whatever reason they offered me a job so now whenever I am kind of bold with them you knew what you hired and so I think it's also being consistent with that message that if you don't move the needle if you keep telling your wives you know you can get someone else because I'm not going to sit back and be satisfied I know this sounds really crazy but status quo is heavy in my heart when I see status quo so the other day one of my boys says there's this guy in town and he bought a gator a $20,000 play toy and he's going down to the river and he's cleaning it up, what do we do and I was like I really don't understand a question you give him a badge and you put a sign on his gator that says I'm part cleanup dude or whatever but it's back to that thinking of like oh gosh we can't and then they said what the what ifs, oh I'm going to be crazy what if another person wants to do it it's a club, all of them he's the president, they clean up the car fantastic and so they really but here's the thing is don't confuse pushback with pessimism and that's why I've had to learn that in the past so many years is that I used to think pushback was pessimistic and what I realized is I want you to pushback I want you to challenge those ideas to each other and we don't attack the person we attack the problem and so I'm focusing on not pushback not being that, so I still get it all the time with my stuff, they're learning because I want to get them to the point where they don't even ask, they'll be like yes we want somebody to clean up the park for free of course, but it's their thing of liability because what it is, what they're thinking they're going to allow, there's a policy there's a law, whatever there's no policy makers in the room that you can't have motorized vehicles on our trail so immediately this guy got a, you know they got a gator and so my staff's like oh my gosh, so break the rule and I'm like dude, figure it out let them do it, like give a little waiver I don't know, make them sign a document do whatever the attorneys make them do begin to, yes why would I tell someone in my community that loves my community so much $20,000 on a gator to clean up my park I'm going to tell them no, uh-uh I'm going to say get friends does that make any sense, shall we or recently this one was funny I told them we need to do some lunch and learn let's eat together, bring in speakers I don't care what the topic is, just let's learn together right, and so I brought it up to my senior staff and one person that's been there 807 years, she was like whoa, whoa well if only 25 people can go so what if I have five people that want to go and then it was so funny to watch the engineer the engineer actually want people looks I was like figure it out, draw straws do whatever, and I'm like bam, that's it you know, it's about getting, because if I listen to all the people that said whoa, what if, what if that's a problem we wouldn't have even been able Ms. Braylon mmm, thank you my colleague that was a hell of a performance, wasn't it absolutely to let our keynote speaker leave without a gift thank you thank you