 We gather here in Colombia as, yes, as Democrats and Republicans and the independents, but more importantly as mayors who are committed to leading our cities and tackling the tough issues that stand to significantly impact our communities and improve quality of life for the men and women that we represent. Yesterday we huddled with our police chiefs to discuss efforts underway in several key public safety areas and today and tomorrow we're going to sit around the table to drill down on other pressing issues such as immigration, infrastructure and opportunity zones. We'll also talk about the upcoming 2020 census and the critical importance of ensuring a full fair and accurate count. We're focusing on new initiatives including our engagement with youth in our cities capturing this incredible dynamic energy we're seeing from young people leading across our country. The conference recently launched a youth involvement task force and today we're releasing a new best practices survey which details the ways in which our young people are engaging with their cities to foster their involvement in their communities. According to the survey 54 cities, 80% of 54 cities, 80% of them maintain an active youth council that helps advise city planning. We're moving forward with that a new one here in Colombia. 89% of them have a leadership program that helps young people develop their professional leadership skills. 89% of cities also administer robust youth internship programs for youth to help them build careers and with the November midterms, just six weeks away, mayors are also doing incredible work to help engage young people in voter registration. Since August, the U.S. Conference of Mayors has been working to help over 200 mayors across the country sign up with mayors for our lives to help young people in their cities register to vote. This energy is being is bolstered by some positive signs showing the willingness of Washington to work with us with us. For instance, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker have been instrumental in making the opportunity zones provisions of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 a reality for our cities. Mayors across the country excited about the great potential of this new federal initiative. It's a once in a lifetime, once in a generation opportunity, a chance to reconnect communities with capital investment. We're grateful for the senator's tireless efforts in there and thank them for their continued support and leadership. Just a few weeks ago, I led a bipartisan delegation of mayors to meet with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to discuss the potential regulations around opportunity zones. It was a productive meeting and we were encouraged by the Secretary's commitment to working with mayors to make the program a success. When we made our funding priorities clear to Congress this year, we fought hard to protect our top priorities such as community development, infrastructure, education, and the arts, just to name a few. They ultimately abandoned the idea of slashing these major programs and instead opted to fund them some at significantly higher amounts to help us to continue to build economic opportunity and enhance the lives of all of our shared constituents. So while there's so much more work to be done on the battle, often sometimes feels uphill, there's still certainly hope for good governance all across America at all levels. Mayors will lead that charge. The more my words, the mayors are not ever going to slow down. What you see here in the camaraderie and the humor, what you see are genuine friendships. Genuine friendships that have extended across this organization for over 80 years with leaders like Joe Riley and my friend Don Pascuelo, a former president's organization, Elizabeth Coutts, whether we're Democrats or Republicans, or choose not to have any labels whatsoever, we work together on behalf of the men and women of America. 85% of our citizens now live in cities and metropolitan economies. 89% of all jobs are located in our communities. 92.1% of America's GDP created in cities and metropolitan economies. As goes America cities, so goes America, the greatest democratic nation in the history of the world.