Activity in the Second Quarter of 2020 we are going to see eyepopping forecasts in the third quarter. We cannot lose sight of what that means for people who are struggling, businesses who are struggling, in the fact we still have a deep hole. Recovery,led k shaped and those who do not have options to work from home, is already fading away. We see a hollowed out downtown. [indiscernible] what does that mean for city revenue . In high rent districts employment is still at that 45 of precovid levels. Colleagues and i have a clause looking at what this means for cities and how it depends on revenue structure, industry, and exposure to covid as well as federal and state policy response. If i could get the next slide, please . Go. E we going into this there were a lot of things we thought we knew about city economies and finances. Much of that has been upended by covid. You are thought to be a Success Story if you are a service economy, and now they are under threat. We used to think cities that tax bythe property tax diversifying revenues into charges and fees for services, or tiny taxes like Hotel Occupancy which are even better because you are basically having tourists pay those and not your residents, they were the winners. They had accessed for revenue streams. Those revenues are vulnerable just like at the state level. Shows, for most, income taxes are not a big chunk of revenue. If you add up the fees and charges and tiny taxes, that accounts for 40 of revenue especially in big cities. We are very lucky to have a panel today that can bring diverse experiences. I will introduce our panelists. Mayor andy burke from chattanooga, tennessee. E is a twoterm state senator i think he was a senator during the Great Recession. Awards likeumerous legislator of the year, leader of the year, and a jv for law school and bachelors at stanford. Cheryl has 35 years of experience. [indiscernible] she was the deputy mayor of the city of indianapolis where she voted on affordable housing, infrastructure, and community engagement. She has gotten many awards. Michael has 15 years of experience. [indiscernible] he is a member of the advisory is a member of the Advisory Board for jp morgan. Is past president of the u. S. Conference affair and serves on various boards including the art institute. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Im going to start with you, carolyn. I know that you are wellversed in all the information coming out nationally. Can you give us a birds eye view . I am happy to do that. I want to thank you for putting together this conversation in the urban institute for this important conversation. It is always good for me to spend time with two of my mayors, albeit one is outside of california. I thought i would do a little bit about what is happening fiscally in california as well as part of the National View thanks to the National League of cities. Let us go back to january 2020. Revenues were finally returning to prerecession levels. We were not out of the woods, but things were looking at. Two months later as covid19 took hold the u. S. Economy went into freefall and at the local level we begin to close down we begin to close down local economies to prevent the spread of covid19. The impact was swift. We had to close businesses, sales plummeted, unemployment skyrocketed, and uncertainty was the name of the game. The fiscal impact of these changes were felt immediately on city budgets. Sales and income tax were the first to be hit and cities that rely on those sources were forced to take immediate action as the shortfalls began. In some cities, even property tax revenues started to show signs of weakening as the economic hardships began to deafen dampen demand for real estate. Out that given that most Cities Fiscal year budget only capture a few months of the recession. It is the fiscal year 21 budget that were more fully feeling the impacts felt by cities across the country. Felt by cities across the country. I truly believe when we look back the toll of this pandemic on our economies could be more severe than that which we experienced during the Great Recession. I know we will talk more about that. If you look at the slide, which is from the National League of cities 20 physical conditions survey, the next slide, you will the depth of a challenge facing city budgets. According to fiscal officers from across the country nearly 90 of cities will be less able in fiscal year 21 van 2020 to meet the needs of their communities. In fact, the current estimates for 2020 put a yearoveryear General Revenue Fund growth at near zero. It is been a long time since we have been at zero. On average you will see in the cities anticipate a 13 decline revenues over 2020. City budgets were immediate and deep. This is not something that was gradual that played out over 18 months which is what we experienced with the Great Recession. Look at whate a happens in california. Monthsl 2020, just four into the year, california cities were facing a 7 billion revenue shortfall due to covid19. Slide andt the next you can see the impact of covid19 while felt across the revenue streams, it is being felt most acutely in the hotel taxes. For itste that is known Recreational Activities and these occupancy taxes are key to local government revenue streams. Fundities, these revenues breadandbutter services in our communities. Services like police and fire, code enforcement, street maintenance, filling potholes. They also fund millions of Public Sector jobs and it is though jobs, which are vital to a strong middle class. You will see these revenue shortfalls in california, and im sure my colleagues from across the country in every state have put together these the shortfalls will have real consequences. With states facing their own budget challenges and the federal government, so far, providing minimal relief to cities we are having to go it alone. With balanced budget requirements and revenue raising restrictions cities are going to have no choice but to cut services, lay off workers, freeze hiring, and rollback projects which is the very investment we need in our communities. Beyond 2020, cities will continue to face economic uncertainty. I hope some of the good news you shared comes to fruition. Be cities are going to focused on keeping communities safe from a surge in covid19 cases. Are also going to try to reopen economies and do so in a safe fashion. I think it is times like these were cities need the federal government to step up and provide assistance. It is the smart thing to do in the right thing to do. Thank you so much, carolyn. Termsas perfect in for review. Let us hear from mayor burke. Carolyn mentored hiring freezes, what you have to say about that . Thank you to the urban institute and you, tracy. I have got to know carolyn over the years and mayor nutter is someone i admire and every governor around booth country admires. Let me put a face to some of the things carolyn is talking about. To make it more exclusive let us try to back up. Cityanooga is a midsized 180,000 city. 8 [indiscernible] we have all of the things going have,t midsized cities but we have also been doing better than most. Forbes magazine said chattanooga would be the number one country for growth. We had a brag, but also to say we were fundamentally in a strong position. City government had built up reserves, we had virtually twice the reserves going into march 2020 then we had going into 2009, and a lot of things were going right. Hits andsudden covid things change immediately. Businessesn small that do not have 60 days of cash reserve. We see it in our Hospitality Industry which had been going like gangbusters, hotels going up everywhere. All of a sudden rooms start to decline. We see it in city coffers because tennessee has zero income tax. It is against our constitution. We have sales tax and we have as the two main sources of revenue. All of a sudden that just started to vanish. This budget we started to put july 1r, and we are on a fiscal year, so we had been anticipating putting together this robust initiative had expanded the services we were giving to people and a huge capital project. That went away and instead we were dealing with setting aside money for Small Businesses to help them survive and ride out the pandemic of closures. We were setting aside money for enhanced service for people in our community to keep up immediate response, which no matter what youre talking about you see increased homelessness in a world of 10 unemployment. All of those things took precedent. I will turn it back to you, tracy. But i want to give people an idea of what it looks like in real world when you enact these freezes. It is one thing to say freeze and everybody says, that is fine. We were lucky we did not furlough anybody, but the realworld consequence is we freeze our fire department. We do not have an academy that puts us at 30 firefighters. At the same time we have a Global Pandemic going on and another 25 firefighters are out at any given time because they have been exposed or they have gotten covid. Now we are down to 55 firefighters and that is one of the myriad of things the City Government does. Ofsets a realworld impact not being able to take a steady approach to how you reduce services. You freeze everything and you are where you are. Thank you so much. Olyn, you mentioned [indiscernible] your instinct is right. In incomel shock tax because of the abruptness of the pandemic, i want you to comment on similarities and differences [indiscernible] thank you, tracy. Thank you to urban institute and my great colleagues, carolyn and mayor burke. Ago when we had not even figured out we were in summer 2008, i am six months seven months into my andt year of my first term my chief of staff and finance director said they needed to talk to me. Clearly i was a rookie and did not realize that when you chief of staff and finance director need to talk to be immediately, i should have known to just run and not take that call. That is a call you never want. There is no good news coming out of that call. But i did not know, so we met. Well, we are not exactly sure what is going on, but we are seeing some unusual signs of lack of revenue, lack of collections. We will monitor it and maybe it is just a blip or anomaly. You know, best of luck. August. E call again in still had not learned the fundamental lesson of not taking the call, but nonetheless, i was slow on the uptake. They said there is definitely something going on. We have a problem and we are running out of money. I said, we just passed the budget in may that was balanced, we made investments, we spent some money. We were not frivolous, but we spent some money. Finally, in september the federal government announced to the economy had gone into recession. Back in december of 2007 actually. A glide and it just continued for some time. You plug a whole and another one andd pop open hole another would pop open. I came home from new york and on march third the state announced stayathome orders. City, us, regardless of suddenly the economy started to shut down, people had to stay home, businesses closed, folks were not sure what the job situation was. Impact. Mmediate and its carolyn talked about not only is the City Government negatively state, and of course the but also our School District which relies on property tax to fund the education of our children. The city will have its own fiscal channel in the School District at the same time. The city and state are primary funders of the education and the commonwealth of pennsylvania. 2008 and 2009, we did not make businesses close, they closed on their own. This was a Health Crisis that led to an economic crisis and we had to close to keep people away from each other to save lives. Way, thisre kind of is a selfinflicted massive wound in order to try and save lives and safe people. Complicateduch more complicated and lastly, there is no end date. There has been a slow reopening, reopening,re many but there are many businesses, not just a philadelphia, but across the United States that have not reopened. Some unfortunately because we unfortunately because we have been in a house six months, seven months, some will never reopen. That is a hit economically, but more in human terms to those terms to those individuals. Many cities have not fully recovered from 10, 11, 12 years ago and now find themselves under more severe pressure. Themselves under more severe pressure. Part of a good news, bad news story that makes you feel better about the selfinflicted damage. The research i have seen suggests even places that were read t relatively ok, people were scared. Undo. Something you cannot undo people are going to show up when they are good and ready. Right. Virus willaid the ultimately decide what happens. Exactly. Andnder what this means what we think of as a healthy city. Mayor burke, you talked about creating Magic Moments in chattanooga. Those were based on being a center for hospitality. Aboutu talk a little bit what you see as your vision of the city Going Forward . Has it changed . We are at the urban institute so we have to use the word density a few times. For the first seven years i was mayor, i ran around saying the word density. Mayor, i ran around saying the word density. If you thought about what is going on in the world around us, we had so much generic that was so easily available to people sayso cheap that i would unique moments or magical moments is what i would talk about. How do we create that . The times we spent with others because, to me at least, the one thing we could create an cities that you could not get anywhere else is that experience that this is the only time, the only you will be able to have this experience. That is what was making sports and music and all those other you will be able to have this experience. That is what was making sports and music and all those other things, in person dining, so valuable. Ago after seven yearseven i stopped saying density, density, density and started saying no density, no density, no density anywhere. That has been a huge change. To havewe continue these spectacular projects for parks and other transformative urban spaces that ultimately, people will be able to gather in large groups. I do think we are in a position right now where our personal changing and i know, from my experience, right now if i receive an invitation to something and it i receive an invitation to something and it is a zoom, webinar circumstance, we are like, great, we can sit in our living room and do this great, we can sit in our living room and do this and turn off the camera and not dress up. That sounds really good. We do not do any of these in person things. Do any of these in person things. I do think there are limits. It may be a long time, and i do not expected to be short, but we will time, and i do not expected to be short, but we will eventually feel safer. I feel a big piece of this is i do not feel safe going into large crowds. I do not feel safe, we have it in person dining open in our have it in person dining open in our state and i do not do it, but there will be a moment when i feel safe again and i start to miss i start to think those great experiences is happening and it feels natural and it feels right. Come back, always they will always come back because there are magical and unique things that happened to their that cannot happen anywhere else. I want to talk more about what it looks like when you come back. Carolyn, you said something earlier about how you think of every dollar a city spends on a surface or job. Can you talk about what a city looks like and what kind of businesses should be expecting in the future . I wish we could predict the future a little better. What mayor burke highlights and what mayor nutter highlights is there is so much uncertainty around what happens i hear people say when we come out of this pandemic or when the pandemic is over, i am not sure that is the phrase we are going to be using as much as we are going to be living with this and we are going to adapt how we do that. I often hear folks when we think about budget cuts in cities think about it in terms of a dollar. Balance the budget and cut a dollar there and cut a dollar here, but every dollar a city spends funds a salary or funds a service that that community has prioritized is something it needs. Mayorse both of these can give you many stories about constituents and the need for more police service, the need for better trash pickup. Somebody always needs a pothole filled in a can unity. When we take away a dollar, we take away the person or the contractor who actually delivers that service. I think really important to keep in mind when we take away the dollar and it takes away the Public Safety and Public Service job, those of the folks who are at the heart of the communities. I talk a lot about the local Government Workforce which is millionsin the 50 across this country. Losing those jobs, and we have lost over a million of them, and it goes to the heart of the people who are living in our communities and providing those services day to day. The dollar,st about but there are people behind the dollar and there are surfaces, particularly during this pandemic i am sitting in the pandemic i am sitting in the middle of a state that has wildfires over 28 going on right now. Those dollars fund the people who are keeping us safe and we cannot have it both ways. City budgetssh and expect fires to be put out and expect there to be resources to address the pandemic so we can open our community safely. Weve got to do both and that is why i will continue to come back to we need a better partner in the federal government. Absolutely. Let us talk about that in a resist,but i cannot what does that look like in philadelphia with the diminished workforce . Looking at the data there are some areas of state and local employment that never came back recession, especially education jobs. It costs money to hire someone, train someone, get them ready to do the job. Someone, get them ready to do the job. What is that look like for you . There are a couple of things. About, i made a decision, and this is not to compare and contrast philadelphia to anyplace because they are all different, but made the initial decision that we would not do massive layoffs. This is a city that was already challenged from an employment standpoint, high poverty rate, it has been over 20 for now 40 years, and it is intergenerational. That, butk more about i did not want to damage the heart and soul of the government. There are so many things you can use technology for, you can mechanize, but there are Many Services where you do need people. What i was constantly thinking while we were in the recession was that, one day this will be over. The same aboutk covid19, but i did believe this part of the Great Recession at that time would end, and that we had to have people in place to provide services to even carry us through the recession, and benefit from recovery. Also hadat moment, you to rethink all the services you are providing and the people doing all this work, do we need to continue to do all these things . Are we the best provider of that service . The mayorrolyn and said, yes, there is a constituency for every service. Unfortunately, it doesnt necessarily mean we should be the provider of it, or that we can. So when the team comes to you and says, here are your options, it is a series of all bad options. And you are trying to figure out the least worst of those options. Publicyou protect safety, look out for your most vulnerable population, protect the heart and soul of the government . Someone has to take in a few dollars that are being sent, people are still paying taxes, someone has to deal with payroll, debt service, other obligations you have to pay, your social services, your prisons, these are mandated obligations you have to have someone has to provide those services. We did shrink the government and did stop providing some services, but i can assure you, local governments cannot cut their way out of these recessions. We talked about a shared sacrifice, it was half cuts and we also raised revenue, also known as new taxes. We also had a great partner in the federal government. With eight years, i served president obama and Vice President bidens administration. We had the economic recovery, we had the stimulus, we had tiger, there were a million calls and a coordinated strategy. The National League of cities, u. S. Conference of mayors, National Association of counties, all of us trying to figure out, and working in partnership. With valeries jarrett, president obama, secretary napolitano, secretary hud . On, Shaun Donovan at secretary hosting some kind of call to help us as cities. We were not alone in this. And today, as i talked to a bunch of mayors, and caroline does as well, but many cities today feel they are on their own. They are just out there struggling, trying to make something happen, and that washington has really checked out. That is a big difference between 2000 date and 2020. 2008 and 2020. Would about natural disasters . , literally ontes ebay competing with each other try to find protective find personal protective equipment. You had cities scrambling on their own with their hospital systems, trying to figure all this out. Seven months later, there is still no known National Strategy to deal with covid19. If it was a hurricane, a tsunami, Severe Weather event, 20 five inches of snow, whatever the case, there are plans to deal with that. You are not alone. You ask everyone to stay at home so you can clear the streets, and eventually it melts or you move it or you do something with it, and slowly in your city back to life. There is nothing, and no indication of when any of this will come to a conclusion. So folks are just hanging on and trying to ride this thing out, however far it goes. Im a very optimistic person, and i am not trying to be down in the dumps, but it is real when you have to make these decisions that mayors face every day. It seems to meet local governments and states are scrambling to develop guidelines without a clear path from the federal government. Sometimes the guidelines are conflicting. Kim reference to superintendent that set at one point, 25 students per classroom, then 15, and it is not easy to reconfigure your classroom and redeploy your school buses. We have really seen federalism stretched to its limits. The good thing about chattanooga, we have the federal government, the State Government, the county government, and then we have City Government. For theke most things, most part in our way of government, the county does much of the support, except for on schools and health. Those other places where the county is the lead. Here we have had, over the last six months, i dont know we could say the federal government is on a different page from somebody else, because theyre are different responses within the federal government as well, the state is on a different page from them, the county and city have not been able to get together on what should be communicationwhen is one of the most important pieces of a Public Health response, people are hearing at least four different messages, all from people that they are and things trust, are staggered in just unbelievable ways. So instead of making it easy for people, we have made it extremely hard for them. This takes time, you have thenamic, red stateblue city peace going on in a state like tennessee red statecity piece, where the State Government has not responsive to cities for years on what they want. And this is another reason to say, you need to cut services more or you need to scale back. And this has been really troubling to me. In the long run, there is a way to get back there, but a Global Pandemic is not conducive to four different responses. I will leave you with this. Chattanooga is on the line with suburbs and there are of us that are right over the line. Now, we think about things we have a mask mandate in our county, but no rural county around us has one, and neither does anybody in northern georgia. Hospitals, that affects our workforce, that affect everything that we are point, we havee to say to ourselves, we are dealing with a Global Pandemic that does not respond to little lines we draw on a map, and we need a coordinated response instead of multiple layers deciding what they should do that is different from each other. Add to that, i have heard comments from both of the mayors, recoveries going to depend a great deal on confidence from the general public in the health system. And if we keep hearing four different viewpoints on is it safe, isnt it safe, what should you do, and the private sector in many cases is just as can used on what they can and cant ourselves sotting far back and getting the public confident again that they can go shop, go dine, get on airplanes, and get back some semblance of whatever normalcy is at this point. And if we cant get it together, then our recovery from this pandemic is going to be twice what it normally might be. We have people in america debating whether you should wear a mask. I mean, we are seven months into this. Im confused. What you talking about . You dont have to be madame that to figure out that might be helpful, to yourself or someone else. We are at that fundamental available in this discussion. Get to being in slightly crowded place, even outdoors. What happens indoors, go back to school k12, college, go into the office building, it all builds on each other. It is about confidence. And my goodness, what will happen when day when there is a and that next level of debate, who gets it, why, im not taking it, i dont have to, all those issues. So we have some Serious Trust and credibility issues at a time yondnormous crisis, be adding the political mix. A ine are going to go to q a moment, i want to remind averyone to please use the q function. Im the californian by birth, and i know the state is dealing with a lot of big issues before this christ, income inequality, homelessness, housing affordability. Those issues are going away, and are getting worse in a Public Health emergency. Mayors have no choice but to try to lead through necessity. What types of leadership are you seeing, or do you expect to see . Whether i am talking to California City officials are ones from tennessee or philadelphia, there is a pragmatism that happens at the local level. And yes, prepandemic, like many other cities and states, we are dealing with challenges around housing affordability, homelessness, Public Safety, we always need more infrastructure investment, can never get enough of that. It keeps our communities strong. And the impact of this pandemic has only exacerbated the underlying challenges that were already in place. At the localoices level if we have to go it alone, some of it is going to be difficult, but i dont know of a local official who is going to walk away from that. They will look at the resources have insets they place, make choices about who delivers what service, and they are going to find ways to forge i had. And if we are fortunate in the short term, the state and federal government will follow our lead and make investments they need to make in local governments. At the end of the day, the nations gdp doesnt rebound and get strong again unless our cities do, because we are the economic engines of this country, we are the places where are theons happen, we places where over 80 of the residents in our country reside. So recovery will start with us. And i continue to look forward to local leaders taking the lead on this in the coming months. If i could add to that, cities right now, i can say this as a mayor, with got a Global Pandemic, weve got an economic crisis, we have a reckoning for 400 years of racial injustice, we have the psychological issues that come from all this turmoil together, and this is a huge challenge for all of us. And this is only going to be worth it if we can come back better and stronger. And there is a way to do this, but we have to have a partner in the federal government to make that happen. We just have to have a federal partner, and the main reason is can, as thenly mayor said, he raised revenues, but we cant do that in an oppressive way. When we raise revenues at the city level, that hurts people that are already struggling the most, and we are going to have tremendous problems with inequality that has only been exacerbated. Point, to have, at some revenue raised to help fix some of these problems to come from the federal level, because that is the only way we can do with these problems. We cant revenue our way out of this on the local level. Any additional revenue, at some point, with got to get that federal partnership. Something of this as an economic asteroid that has hit, or a weather analogy, a cat five hurricane across the country. Local governments are not positioned to raise revenues in a way that will help them solve the crisis, which leads to a question about balanced budgets. A couple of you mentioned your cities went into this with unprecedented budget reserves, but not enough to deal with the crisis. At times like those were adopted in theonse to a pandemic 19th century, and it sounds to me like responses in the 19th century were not appropriate in the 21st century, but is there a way to modernize and tuitions to respect the increasing volatility of revenues, increasing volatility of economies, for the world we are in these days . I think those measures were put into place, i wasnt around at that time, but ive read about it. I think that takes us down a steep and slippery slope. Because of a previous financial crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, we have an oversight entity i think is about to expire, but it issued bonds in the 1990s and brought the city back from the brink of bankruptcy. Fiveyeard us to file plans. Our charter requires us to have a balanced budget, unlike the federal government. We have to have a balanced budget, cant spend more than you have that level of fiscal discipline is incredibly important. And if you start removing and tinkering with those rules, you will find cities going bankrupt, andg out of business, rating agencies would go crazy, your ability to borrow, Interest Rates would go through the roof. That is potentially the worst selfinflicted wound. It is absolutely mortgaging the future to try to live in current times. I agree with mayor burke, but this is about an infusion of significant dollars from an outside source, for the sake of the country and as carolyn mentioned, for the sake of the national economy. Theet me add to that that, balanced budget a couple of things for us. It adds to local credibility. Credibility and trust is in short supply right now in government, and it is great for us to have. That, wed piece is dont control the treasury so we dont control the fed. The federal government, when it comes to debt, has huge advantages on us. And being unbalanced, they have different Resources Available to them that we dont. So it is more dangerous for us to do this than the federal government. I will say, i say this all the time, it is economics 101 right now that we should try to get to every dollar that we have out on the street that we can responsibly use. It is important for us to continue to do capital project, maybe borrow capital projects, maybe borrow a little bit more now than we usually would. We are a triple a bonded rated city, so we can do some things other people cant, and we have to mixer we are doing post, but i think figuring out what those saying, for cities on this local level who dont taxation,e progressive taxation, for us to really ramp up our spending and go out of balance is a different situation than when the federal government can do it. I have a question about sales and that negative expectations are contrary to relatively flat service and retail activity through august. Beyond restaurants or food service, there are many things part of the retail sales tax base, and tax treatment on food to go versus food consumed in restaurant. If you could talk about expectations for sales taxes and also property taxes . I think it came up earlier that property taxes tend to be or stable, the last recession was a housing recession and did affect property taxes. Nevertheless, if commercial buildings are not seeing not paying rent, they might be accruing property taxes or assessment levels. And maybe certain homeowners will as well if they lose their jobs. I wonder if you could comment. I can start with that for chattanooga. A 270nooga is about Million Dollars operating budget and 50 million of capital per year, and 100 Million Dollars for wastewater and other dedicated funds. It ends up being about 420 million. Because of the cares act and 600 per week, that has been hugely beneficial to cities like ours, as we havent seen the massive drop. Issues in ourge Entertainment Industry and Hospitality Industry. We have huge sectors of our city that are doing, are just really struggling, particularly local businesses, particularly businesses owned by people of color. So when it comes to our sales tax, what we budgeted for this year on our operations dollars justn 8. 5 million loss, over 3 . When you say relatively fat, a flat, a threely percent cost is relatively flat, but our cost continue to go up, our Health Care Costs more, and a little over 3 may not sound like a lot, but 8. 5 million for us is a very significant knock, at a time when expectations and need among our constituencies growing by leaps and bounds. General peiece is that oural piece sales tax as growing is growing to about 10 . You mentioned expenditures that were going up because of covid. I know the federal government is reimbursing a lot of those costs right now through the cares act, but that funding goes away at the end of this year. Projectingople are the effects will go as far as into physical 2024. So it would be nice to have help on the revenue shortfall as well as the increased spending directly related to the pandemic. Let me just say on this red statenew city, those dollars went to the states, not the cities. Is only in states where people actually want to reimburse cities where that has happened. Thank you. I want to talk about the longrun issue we were talking about before, poverty. A couple of questions came up. Based on what you know about poverty or the way the problem has changed in response to automation and other trends, what are things you might have done differently as mayor, or all of you, what do you see as strategies mayors are going to look at, particularly mayors on the front lines of the bow . Of the battle . Coming into the Mayors Office in 2008, i had been a city councilmember for a while, lifelong philadelphian, and i have known we have a poverty challenge and have had one for a long time. Retrospect, i would have loved to have started our work on developing, which we did, our antiproperty land our antipoverty plan. But the recession got in the way. You can only do so many things at a time. Trying toou are literally save the city from the brink of running out of money, it is that much more difficult to work on such massive issues. But we did get to it and develop a plan that is still being time, shareder my prosperity philadelphia. The poverty rate has actually come down over the past few years. It went up during the recession and has slowly come back down. But this is really about education, skills, training. We have hundreds of thousands of people not reading at a level that they could get work, computer literacy, a variety of things. That recession, now this recession and a Health Crisis, how do we retrain americans the jobs of the church, not the jobs that have gone away . At the same time, philadelphia is bolstered by the heavy presence of education and medicine organizations, providing 37 of the jobs in philadelphia, many of which do not require a fouryour bachelors degree. So training certificates and the for i think will be helpful leading philadelphia and many other cities out of the current economic crisis. But i wish we would have been able to start earlier, but we were trying to save the city from going broke. In california, i dont know that nationwide we saw as much of this coming out of the great there was an antiproperty planned that sort of got put on hold to focus on planery antipoverty that sort of got put on hold to focus on recovery. When i see is injecting an antipoverty component into the arevery plans, see we going to try to capture that moment early. But since we were already dealing with tremendous inequities around the state, people of color disproportionately impacted by covid, and we have the opportunity in the recovery to do some correction on that. Is there anything that you wanted to say on that . I think that they are right. First, with got to make things safe. We are still not at a point when things are safe. And we have really got to focus me, moving and to people to the middle class. We have seen that he over time cities cantry, and be great innovators when it comes to this. We have lots of things that we can do and show the way, and we have to find ways in our country to take it to scale, which is very difficult. Federalism the point, we have to have participation at the state, federal and local levels to make these things happen. We wantus at least, those wages to go up, that is part of it, so a multipronged attack is the only way that is going to happen, to raise the education level, the type of Economic Development you have, the attractiveness of your city. Istakes a well, it difficult, and it has to be sustained over a long time. Muche mayor said something earlier, and i know we are running out of time, but i feel there are so many differences between 2008 and 2020. You touched on it, he touched on it, and we havent talked much about it, but the civil unrest, covid19 hasrife, forced out into the open, in addition to the murders of george floyd, breonna taylor, the shooting of jacob blake, aumaudrbery mo black and brown people disproportionately negatively affected by covid19. It is open for everybody to see, if you want to see, the challenges of black people, brown people, people of color, in the United States of america. And that when all this happens at the same time these issues are not going away, we dont know and end date for covid19, we dont know and end date for fiscal distress, and we dont know when americans are going to finally decide that people are going to be treated equally, we are not going to have these differences, we are knuckling to be so glaring in the inequities. So there is so much work to be done, but when carolyn talks about looking at things from an equity lens, that is one of the driving components of what 2020 is about. And i am praying and hopeful we dont lose sight of that as we make progress in these other areas. This is not a thing. It is not the moment. It is what is going on and what is happening in america, and we need to make sure it remains front and center. Very well put. We started talking about Small Businesses and pressures on certain industries, and we shouldnt forget people and played those industries are often people of color, immigrant families starting businesses, and i am hopeful cities can reclaim that role, maybe doing it better, based on what we are seeing in terms of innovative leaders who are trying i want to thank you all so much for being here. Leaders who are trying. I want to thank you also much for being here. I want leaders to continue to engage and check out all these issues at the state and local level in the federal level. Take care. Mike hensonident senator Kamala Harris are preparing for tonights Vice President ial debate in utah, this is a picture of the university of utah, where the debate will take place. The moderator will be susan page of usa today. Cspan is live coverage starts at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. With a preview program. P. M. Ebate starts at 9 00 we focus now on mike pence ahead of his debate tonight with senator Kamala Harris. We are joined with andrea neal, editor of indianapolis star, pence thethe book path to power. Where does that name come from . Back i suspect that goes