Are been institute, this runs an hour. After recordbreaking declines in Economic Activity in the Second Quarter 1 45,020 we are going to be 25 vote in the Second Quarter. For people who are still struggling to climb out of. What is written about the cake shaped recovery, workers at the low Income Distribution who dont have option to work from home and for whom federal help is already taken away. As we see with fewer workers buying lattes, any service that depends on a smile, what does that mean for revenue . One estimate suggests in high rent districts, employment is at 45 so we have my colleagues and i, for cities and looking at how it depends on revenue structure and exposure to covid19, federal and state policy response. If i could get the next slide please. There we go. The point is going into this there are a lot of things we knew about city economies and finances and it has been upended by covid19. A Success Story and many of those jobs are under threat. Cities that successfully evaded property taxes by diversifying the revenue into things like charges and fees and services, Hotel Occupancy taxes which are even better because youre having tourists pay those taxes and not your president , you think of those cities as the winners as well as those with access to a revenue stream thanks to laws that are on the books. And income tax, we see those revenues are vulnerable like they are, they simply shows for most cities income taxes are not a big chunk of revenue, these fees and charges and other taxes and that accounts for 40 of revenue and there is a lot of variation, you see one city. We are lucky to have a panel of experiences and different types of cities. I will introduce our panelists, mayor andy burke from chattanooga, tennessee, a former teacher and senator, i think he was state senator during the Great Recession and won numerous awards, made him legislator of the year, municipal leader of the year and the university of Chicago Law School and a bachelors degree. There are more than 25 Years Experience as a leader in advocates in private sectors, executive director of the league of california cities and spend decades at the National League of cities in washington dc to speak to the National Perspective with federal advocacy. Deputy mayor of the city of indianapolis with affordable housing, infrastructure and community initiatives, including the university of minneapolis. Mayor Michael Nutter is a tutor mayor of philadelphia, the inaugural professor in urban affairs at Columbia University school of international and Public Affairs and senior fellow at the citys program and member of the Advisory Board from jpmorgan chase, past president of the us conference of mayors answers on various welcome to you all. I will start with you. The league of california cities published a report summarizing the experience of cities of california and information coming at the National League of cities, give us a birds eye view of what is happening in the state and national level. Thank you for putting together the conversation, this important conversation, good for me to spend time with 2 of your favorite mayors in california. Good to be a lot a little set of what is happening fiscally in california cities as well as part of the National View thanks to the National League of cities, in 2020 city revenues were returning to the Great Recession level with reserves and revenues trending positive. 2 months later in march as covid19 to cold the us economy went into freefall. Closer look economies to prevent the spread of covid19. The impact was swift, had to close businesses, retail sales plummeted, unemployment skyrocketed. And certainty with the name of the day. These changes were felt on city budget, sales and income tax revenues, cities that rely on those sources to take immediate action. Antitax revenues showed signs of weakening as the economic hardships began to dampen. Or in other cities. I want to deck out most cities, fiscal year 20 budget captures only a few months of the pandemic recession. It is the fiscal 20 when your budget which most city start july 1st the fiscal impacts felt by cities across the country. I truly believe when we look back at all of this pandemic on our economies could be more severe, we will talk a little bit more about that. The National League of cities 2020 fiscal condition survey. The next slide. You see the breadth and depth of challenges facing city budgets. According to fiscal officers across the country nearly 90 of cities in fiscal year 21 than in 2020 to meet the needs of their communities. Their estimates for 2020 put a yearoveryear General Revenue Fund growth at near 0. It has been a long time since we were at 0. On average in the next slide cities anticipate 13 decline in fiscal year 2021 general Fund Revenues over what they having general revenue. And like the Great Recession the impact on cities budgets of covid19 were immediate and deep. This is not something that was gradually played out over 18 months or so which we experienced with the Great Recession. I want to look at what happened in california. By april of 2020, four months into the year, california cities were facing a 7 billion revenue shortfall and general Fund Revenues due to covid19. If you look at the next slide the impact of covid19 being felt across all the Revenue Streams tracy highlighted, it is felt acutely in sales taxes and not surprisingly in our hotel bed taxes. In a state known for Recreational Activities and tourism, with transit occupancy taxes, are key to the Revenue Streams and those have been severely hit. For cities, these Revenues Fund essential breadandbutter services in our communities. Services like police and fire, code enforcement, street maintenance, also fund millions of publicsector jobs and those jobs which are vital to a strong middle class in the country. If you look at the next slide these revenue shortfalls in california, colleagues across the country in every state put together these numbers and the National League of cities as well. These shortfalls have real consequences. With states facing their own budget challenges in the federal government so far providing minimal relief to cities we have to go it alone. With balanced budget requirements and revenue raising restrictions, cities have no choice but to cut services, lay off workers, freeze hiring and rollback Capital Project which is the investment we need in communities. As we look beyond 2020 cities will continue to face economic and fiscal uncertainty. I hope the good news you shared a few minutes ago does come to fruition. The cities will be focused on keeping communities safe from a surge in covid19 and what happens with the flu, but also trying to reopen the local economies and to do so in a safe fashion. It is times like these where cities need the federal government to step up and provide assistance, it is the smart thing to do and the right thing to do. Thank you so much. That was just perfect, lets turn to mayor burke and hear what is happening in your city, what included many of these projects. What do you say about that. It is a pleasure to be on mayor nutter is somewhat i not only admire but every mayor around the country is a mayor nutter fan. Appreciate you all. Lets try to back up, chad a midsized city, 189, chattanooga, a city in the county that is 375,000 and the metro that is 575,000, the center of that dona donut. We have all the things going on but we also have been doing better than most. At the beginning of the year, the number one city for job growth, mayor noted that you get paid per brad. We have a brad. We work fundamentally in the position where City Government built up our reserve, we had virtually twice the reserve through march of 2020 we had going into 2009. Lots of things going on. All of a sudden covid19 hits, things change immediately. They dont have 60 days of cash reserve, seton Hospitality Industry going like gangbusters, going up everywhere and all of the sudden in start decline and city coffers. 0 income tax, it is against the constitution. We have sales tax and hotel motel tax, two main sources of revenue apart from the dollars we get for other governmental forces like state and federal and all of a sudden as we had the budget, this budget we started to put together, july 1st fiscal year. We had been anticipating putting together this robust initiative it expanded the services we need and huge Capital Projects, we are dealing with setting aside money for Small Businesses to help them survive and ride out the pandemic of closures, setting aside money for enhanced service for people in the community to beef up Immediate Response to homelessness and no matter what you are talking about with eviction and those that found a way you see increased homelessness in a world of 10 unemployment, all of those things took precedent and i will turn it back over to you. I want to give people an idea what it looks like in the real world when you enact these freezes. It is one thing, that is fine. We are lucky we did not furlough anybody but the real world part of this is and and at the same time we have a Global Pandemic going on. But just be an emergency where you just freeze everything and you are where you are. Thank you so much. Carolyn, committed similarities and similarities and differences with the Great Recession. I cant resist plugging and article we did the circuit instinct is right, the initial shock to income at the state and local level combined or worse than the Great Recession than this pandemic. I want to invite you to the last recession because apparently it was not so great or not so great anymore competitive. No. Thank you, tracy and certainly to urban institute my great, great colleagues carolyn and mayor berke. You know, a dozen years ago when we had not even figured out we were in a recession yet, some of 2008, six months, seven months into my first year of my first term, and my chief of staff and finance director said they needed to talk to me. Clearly, i was a rookie and didnt realize that when your chief of staff and finance director need to talk to you immediately, i should have known to just run. And not take that call. That the card you dont want. There is no good news coming out of that call. But i didnt know, so we met. And i said well, again, the sum of 2008, we are not exactly, exactly sure whats going on but we are seeing some unusual summer signs of lack of revenue, lack of collections. But we will monitor it and maybe its just a blip or an anomaly, so best of luck. I got the call again in august. Still havent learned the fundamental lesson of not taking that call or meeting but nonetheless im little slow on the uptake. They said theres definitely something going on. We have a problem and were starting to run out of money. I said we just passed a 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 at the federal government announced that the economy had gone into recession actually back in december of 2007. And so it was a bit of a glide, if you will come into it and it just continued as carolyn said for some time. You make steps, you plug a hole, another whole will pop open. In this scenario i came home from new york on the night of march 12, and on the morning of march 13, the state announced immediate stayathome orders, and all of us basically, regardless the city, almost anywhere in the country suddenly the economy started to shut down, people had to stay home, businesses closed, folks were not even sure what their job situation was. And it was immediate in its impact. We talked about, and carolyn had some slides up, not only is the City Government negatively impacted and, of course, the state, philly is a city and county can put also our School District which heavily relies on property tax to fund the education of our children. And so the city will have its own fiscal challenges and the School District at the same time, and the city of the state of the primary funders of education in the commonwealth of pennsylvania. And so in 20089 we didnt make businesses closed. They closed some on all because of an economic worldwide crisis. 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. And so in a bizarre kind of way this is a selfinflicted massive wound in order to try to save lives and save people. Its that much more complicated. And lastly, theres no end date. Theres been a slow reopening but there are many, many businesses, not just in philadelphia but across the United States that have not reopened. Some unfortunate because we have now all been announced six months, seven months, depending on your calendar, some will never reopened. Thats a hit economically but more in human terms to those individuals. Many cities have not fully recovered from ten, 11, 12 years ago and now find themselves under even more severe pressure. Theres sort of a good news bad news story in a way that makes you feel better about police at least the researcg suggest places people were scared. It selfinflicted and yet its also something you cant undo by seeking out stayathome orders. People show up and transact in the market place when theyre good and ready. Dr. Fauci of said the virus will ultimately decide what happens here. I just wonder what this means about what we think of as a healthy city. Mayor berke talked about this idea of in chattanooga, all based on the center for hospitality. Can you talk about what going forward, has a change or are you hoping to. [inaudible] we are at the urban institute so have to use the word density at least a few times. For the first seven years that i was mayor i ran around saying the word density everywhere get rid to create density, and if you thought about whats going on in the world around us, we had so much generic that was so easily available to people and so cheap that i would say either unique moments for magical moment was what i would talk about, is how would we create that and it was density, through entertainment. The times we spent with others because to me at least the one thing that we could create in cities that you can get anywhere else but that experience, the only time and the only place youll be able to have this experience. Thats what was making sports and music and all those other things in person dining so valuable. Well, six months ago after seven years i stopped saying density density density and started saying no density, no density, no density anywhere. Thats been a huge change even by the way as we continue to have these spectacular projects for parks and other transformative urban spaces that ultimately one of the great things is people be able to gather in large groups. I do think that we are in a position right now where our personal habits are changing, and i know at least some might experience will if my wife and i receive an invitation to something and its a resume webinar type circumstance, we are okay, great, we can in her living room and do this in turn off the camera and not dressed up, and a sound really good, and so we dont do any of these in person thinks. I do think there are limits and it may be a long time, i dont expect it to be short, but we will eventually start to find ways where we feel safer. I think a big piece of this is i dont feel safe going into large crowds. I dont feel safe. We had in person dining open in our state. I dont do it, but that will be a a moment where i feel safe again and i do start to miss those, start to think this great experience is happening and it feels natural and it feels right. And cities have always come back. They will always come back because there are magical unique things that happened there that cannot happen anywhere else. I wanted to talk what it looks like when cities come back. Carolyn, use something earlier about how your relationship as a service for a job. Can you talk about what the city looks like if it has cut its budget and what services, businesses and residents should be expecting when we do start to come out of his . Boy, wish we could predict the future a little better than i think what mayor berke highlights and what mayor nutter highlights, is there so much uncertainty around what happens when i hear people say when we come out of this pandemic, or when the pandemic is over. Im not sure thats the phrase will come to be using as much as it is we are going to be living with this and were going to adapt how we do that. I often hear folks, we think about budget cuts in cities, think about it just in terms of a dollar. We just need to balance and ten balance the budget. But every dollar the city spends funds salary or its sons of service that that community has prioritized as something it needs it funds. Im sure both of these mayors can give many stories that constituents and the need for more police service, the need for better trash pickup. Somebody always needs a pothole filled in a committee. So we take away a dollar, we take away the person or the contractor who actually delivers that service. Really important to keep in mind when we take away the dollar and it takes away the public safety, Public Service job. Those are the folks over at the heart of our communities. I talk a lot about the local government workforce, which is probably in the millions across this country, and so losing those jobs and at this point weve lost over a million of them, thats real and it goes to the heart of the people who are living in our communities and providing those services gay today. So its not, its not just about the dollar but there are people behind the dollar and there are services particularly during this pandemic. Im sitting in the middle of a state that has wildfires, over 28, going on at this moment in time. Those dollars fund the people who are keeping us safe, and we cant have it both ways. We cant just slash city budget and expect fires to be put out and to expect there to be resources to address the pandemic so that we can open our communities safely. We have got to do both and thats why i will continue to come back to we get a better partner in the federal government to help us out. Absolutely. I i do want to talk about tht in a second i cant resist, what does it look like in philadelphia with the city coming back with a diminished workforce . Looking at the data that are some areas of state and local implement that never came back from the Great Recession especially noneducation jobs. Do you feel like there were, it costs money to hire someone. What does it look like for you . There are a couple of things. First of all, i made a decision that, and this is not to compare and contrast philadelphia to any of the place because everyplace is different, but made the initial decision was that we would not do massive layoffs. This is a city that was already challenged from an employment standpoint, high poverty rate. Philadelphia unfortunately has a highest poverty rate of the ten largest cities in the United States of america. Its been over 20 for now 40 years, and it is intergenerational and deeply entrenched. We can talk more about that a little later. Also i did not want to damage the heart and soul of the government, which theres so many things that you can use technology for. You can mechanize, but there are many, Many Services where you do the people. And so what i was constantly thinking about while were in the recession was that one day this will be over. Now, we would like to think the same thing about covid19 but i mean i did actually believe that this part of the Great Recession back at that time would end and that we had to have the people in place to provide services to even carry as to the recession and benefit from recovery. But in that moment you also had to rethink all the services you were providing and all the people who are doing all this work, and we need to continue to do all of these things . I was the best provider of that service . And as both carolyn and the mayor said, yes. Theres a constituency for every service. Unfortunately it just doesnt necessarily mean that we should be the provider of it or that we can. When the team comes to you and says here are your options i can assure you that its a series of all bad options. What youre trying to figure out is the least worst of those options. How do you protect public safety, how to look after your most vulnerable, how do you protect the heart and soul of the government . Someone has to take in a few dollars that are being set, that people are still paying their taxes. Someone has to do with payroll. Employees need to get paid. Other obligations that you have to pay. Your social services, your prisons, these are mandated obligations that you have to someone has to provide those services. We did shrink the government. We did stop providing some services but i can assure you that local governments cannot cut their way out of these recessions. We talked about a a shared sacrifice. It was half cuts and we also raise the revenue, also known as new taxes. But it with you and i know you want to get to it but but, i m, we also have a great partner in the federal government. Next question. Seven of my eight years i served with president obama, Vice President biden so we have the economic recovery. We had the stimulus. We had the were a million calls and a coordinated strategy. U. S. Conference of mayors, National Association of counties, all of us tried to figure out and working in partnership how many calls with valerie jarrett, president obama, secretary napolitano, secretary johnson, you know, sean donovan. Every cabinet secretary hosting some kind of call to try to help us as cities. We were not alone in this come have to say today as i i talkea bunch of mayors and i know the mayor does and carolyn does as well, but many of these cities today feel they are on their own. They are just out there struggling trying to make something happen, and that washington is really kind of check out. That is a big difference between 2008 and 2020. A different from natural disasters and others. Heres of the thing. You had states literally on ebay competing with each other trying to buy personal protective equipment. You had cities scrambling on their own with their Hospital Systems trying to figure all of this out. There is a still seven months later there is still no known National Strategy to do with covid19. Now, if it was a hurricane, a tsunami, Severe Weather event, 25 inches of snow, whatever the case may be, there are plans to deal with that. You are not alone. Youre asking want to stay at home so you can clear the streets and then eventually it melts or you military do something with it and you slowly bring your city back to life. There is nothing and no indication of when any of this will come to a conclusion and so folk such as hanging on and trying to ride this thing out, however far it goes. Im not a debbie downer. Im a very optimistic person so im not trying to be down in the dumps but it is real when you have to make these decisions that mayors are facing everyday. I want to environ mayor berke to talk about it seems to me like local governments and states are scrambling to develop guidelines in the absence of a clear path from federal government government and sometimes those guidelines are conflicting. We had a super to the senate went with it was 25 students per classroom and then it was 16. Its that easy to reconfigure your classrooms and redeploying your school buses. What has it been like you as a local official . We really have seen federalism stretched to its limits here. Again, just think about chattanooga. We have the federal government, we have the State Government, we have the county government because chattanooga is a little of that donut and there we have City Government. And like most things, for the most part at least in our way of government, the county does much of the support but is generally not lead except on schools and those of the places with the county is the lead. Here we have had over the last six months the federal government, i dont know we could say the federal government is on a different basis of motels because there are different responses within the federal government as well. We have different comments. The state is on a different page from them. The county and the city have not been able to get together on what should be happening, and so people, when communication is one of the most important pieces of a Public Health response, people are hearing at least four different messages from all from people they are supposed to trust, and things are staggered in just unbelievable ways. And so instead of really making it easy for people, we have made it extremely hard for them. At the same time takes place in a dynamic where especially in the place, and carol has a bit of a different political peace, but you have the red state blue city piece going on in a state like tennessee where on a fundamental level the State Government has not been responsive to cities now four years on what they want and this is another reason to say what you know what, you need to cut your services for, and you need to scale back, and this is, this has been fully troubling to me. In the long run i think that is a way to get back there, but a Global Pandemic is not conducive to four different responses. I will leave you with this, think about this. So chattanooga is on the line with georgia, and, in fact, they are servants of us the are right over the line. And so there are suburbs we havent asked mandate in hamilton county, but no world county around us has one and neither does anybody in northern georgia. That affects our hospitals. That affects our workforce. That affects everything that we are doing, and so at some point we have to say to ourselves, we are dealing with the Global Pandemic that does not respond to the little lines that we draw on a map and we need a coordinated response instead of multiple layers deciding what they should do thats different from each other. Tracy, if i could add to that. Ive heard in both comments from both of the mayors. A recovery is going to depend on a great deal of confidence by the general public in the health system. And if we keep hearing for different viewpoint on is it safe, isnt it safe, what shod you do, and the private sector in many cases is just as confused about what they can do and what they cant do, we are really setting ourselves so far back in getting the Public Confidence again that they can go shop, that they can go dine, that they can get on airplanes and get back to some semblance of whatever normalcy is at this point. If we cant get it together, then our recovery from this pandemic is going to be twice what it might normally be. We have people in america debating whether or not you should wear a mask. I mean, we are seven months into this. Like, i am confused, like what are you talking about, right . You dont have to be madam chair a to figure out that that might be helpful to yourself or someone else madam chair a that fundamental of the level in this discussion, then how do you get to being in a slightly more out of place even outdoors, what happens indoors, go back to school, k12, k12, college, go an office building. It all builds on each other. About confidence. And then my goodness, what will happen one day in this quoteunquote a vaccine . And then that next level of the victim who gets it, why, im not taking it, i dont have to. All of those kinds of issues and so we had some Serious Trust and credibility issues at a time of enormous crisis beyond adding in the political mix. Were going to coach tonight in a minute so what are my everyone to submit your questions in the q a function but but i want to go back to carolyn first because if things didnt syntonic seem done in authority, under californian and, by birth, and i know the state, is given with love big issues before this crisis, income inequality, homelessness, housing affordability. Those issues are not going away. If any think theyre getting worse in the Public Health emergency. Mayors have no choice but to try to weave through adversity. What kinds of leadership are you saying or what do you expect to see . Well, i think whether i am talking to california, talking about California City officials are ones from the tennessee or philadelphia, pennsylvania, this is a pragmatism that happens at the local level. And yes, prepandemic like many other states, cities and states across the country, we argued with challenges around housing affordability, homelessness, public safety. We always need for infrastructure investment, can never get enough of that to keep our community strong. The impact of this pandemic is only exacerbated, the underlying challenges that were already in place. We have got choices at the local level if we have to go it alone. Thats going to be difficult but i dont know of a local official google walked away from that. They are going to look at the resources they have, the assets that in place, the private sector partnerships they can make him feel make choices about who delivers what service and they are going to find ways to forge ahead. If we are fortunate in the short term, the state and federal government will follow our lead and make the investments that we need them to make in the local government. At the end of the day, the nations gdp doesnt rebound and get strong again unless our evs do because we are the economic engines of the city. We are the place where innovations have. Over 80 of the residents in our country reside. And so recovery will start with us and i continued to look forward to local leaders taking a lead on this in the coming months. If i i could just add to th. Cities right now i could say this as a, we have got a Global Pandemic. Weve got economic crisis thats going on. We have reckoning of 400 use of racial injustice. We have to me the psychological issues that come from all this turmoil together, and this is a huge challenge for all of us. This is only going to be worth it if we can come back better and stronger, and there is a way for us to do this but we have to have a partner in the federal government to make it happen. We just have to a partner. The main reason for that is because we only can as mayor nutter said, he raised revenues, but we cant do that. When we raise revenues at the city level, that hurts the people who are already struggling the most fear were going to have tremendous problems with inequality that is only been exacerbated. We have to have at some point revenue raised that helps with some of these problems that come from the federal level just because thats the only way we can deal with these problems. We cannot do that. We cannot revenue our way out of this on the local level. Any additional revenue at some point with got to get that federal partnership. I sometimes think of this as an economic asteroid that is hit, or he could use with analogy but its like a category five hurricane across the country. The question is been a mine that has come up from the audience, i think a couple of you mention cities have unprecedented budget reserves but not have to do with this crisis. In response to Pandemic Response and i can send you, it seems theres no way are appropriate to the 21st century which is not the same if you get rid of them are all might bond market price of regular sinning. Is there a way to modernize these institutions to respect the increase in volatility of revenue, as economies that just makes sense for the world we are in these days . You know, i mean, tracy, i think those measures are put into place. I wasnt around at that time but i mightve read a little bit about it. I think that takes us down a pretty steep and slippery slope. In philly, because of the previous financial crisis in the 80s into the 90s, we havent oversight entity which i think is about to expire but issued bonds back in the 90s and bought the city back literally from the brink of bankruptcy, required us to file five year plans. Our charter requires a balanced budget. Unlike the federal government because we dont print money, we have to have a balanced budget. You cant spend more than you have. That level of fiscal discipline i think its critically important, and if you start removing, tinkering with some of those rules you will find these cities going bankrupt, going out of business. Several rating agencies would go crazy. Your ability to borrow would go, 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 berke, that this is about an infusion of significant dollars from an outside source for the sake of the country and for the sake of the national economy. Let me add to that, that i think the balanced budget outlays for us does a couple of things. Number one is it adds to local credibility, which is actually, credibility and trust is in short supply right now in government, and its great for us to have it. The second piece is a bad we dont control the treasury. We dont control the fed, and so the federal government when it comes to debt has since huge advantages on us, and being unbalanced. They just have different Resources Available to them that we dont and so its more dangerous for us to do this than the federal government. I will say, i said all the time its like economics 101 right now that we should try to get every dollar that we have out on the street that we can responsibly use. It is important for us to continue to do Capital Projects to maybe borrow a little bit more now than we usually would to pay back because as i said earlier we are aaa bonded rated city so we can do some things that other people cant and we have got to make sure we are doing those. But i think figuring out what those are, and then still saying hey, but for cities on this local level who dont have income taxation, who dont have progressive taxation, for us to really ramp up our spin area and go out of balance is a different situation than the federal government can do. A question also about sales taxes and that guess the negative expectations are contrary to flat retail and Food Service Activities at least through august. I i guess i would add to that, restaurants or Food Services are many other things that are part of the retail Sales Tax Base and there a difference in the tax treatment of things like food in a restaurant. Im going to piggyback on that if you could talk about expectations for sales taxes and also property taxes. I think it came up earlier that property tax tend to be more stable. In this case if there are commercial holdings that are not being rented, they might be appealing their property taxes to their investment levels. Maybe certain homeowners will do that as well so i just wonder if you all could sort of comment on what that would look like. I can start with that for chattanooga. Just to give you an idea, chattanooga is about 270 million operating budget, about 15 million of capital for your engine 100 million for wastewater in some other dedicated funds. Instead of being about 420 million or so. And things have been, because of the cares act and the 600 per week, that is been hugely beneficial to cities like ours as we havent seen the massive drop, but there is huge, we have huge issues in our Entertainment Industry and a Hospitality Industry. We have sectors of our city that are doing, are just really struggling, particularly local businesses, particularly businesses owned by people of color. And so when it comes to our sales tax what we budgeted for this year on our operations dollars was 8. 5 million 8. 5 s which is just over 3 . Again when you say relatively flat, 3 loss is relatively flat. Our loss continues to go up and our healthcare and Everything Else costs more, and 3. 5 , a little over 3 may not not sound like a lot but 8. 5 billion for us, you know, is a very significant loss at a time where expectations and needs among our constituents is growing by leaps and bounds. And again our general, the general piece is that our sales tax, because again were bit of a niche city, has been growing in the neighborhood of 10 . Singapore 5 drop year to year as opposed to a 10 increase is a massive difference for us. You mention some expenditures that are going up because of covid. The federal government is reversing a lot of those cost them through the cares act but the funny goes away at the end of this year and is a think carolyn pointed out, the worst year will be fiscal 21 and people projecting it will go in as far as fiscal 24. It would be nice to have more help on the revenue shortfalls as well as the increasing spending that is directly related to this pandemic. Before you and that let me say again on this red state blue city thing, that those dollars went to the states, not to the citys. Only the states where people want to reimburse cities that that is actually happening. Because you did not go to 500,000 people overnight and qualified for the exactly. Thank you. I want also talk about the sort of longer an issue were talking about before poverty. We have a couple of questions that came up. Mayor nutter, they send what you know now about poverty or the way the problem has changed and now its a lot of response to automation and other secular trends, what are three things you might expect differently or inviting all you come what you see as poverty combating strategies that mayors will be looking at in the next several years, since it is mayors who on the frontlines of this battle . Tracy, the first thing is, coming into the Mayors Office in 2008, as mentioned i had been a city councilman for quite a while, i have no, we have a poverty challenge and have had one for a long period of time. In retrospect, i wouldve loved to have started our work on developing which we eventually did, are antipoverty plan, but quite honestly the recession got in the way. You can only do so many things at a time, and when you are trying to literally save the city from the brink of running out of money its just that much more difficult to work on such massive issues but we didnt get to it and we did develop a plan. It is still being utilized after my time, share prosperity philadelphia. The poverty rate has come down over the past few years. It went up during the recession, and has slowly kind of come back down. But this is really about education. Its about skills. Its about training. We have hundreds of thousands of people not reading at a level that they could get work, Computer Literacy come up for a variety of things. So again the recession, that this recession and Health Crisis, how do we retrain americans again for the jobs of the future, not the jobs that are on the way, and at the same time philadelphia is bolstered by heavy presence of education and medicine organizations, 37 of jobs in philadelphia mint which do not require a fouryear bachelors degree. And so training, certificates and the like i think will be helpful to leaving philadelphia and many other cities out of the current economic crisis. Yeah, i wish weve been able to start earlier but we were literally trying to save the city from going broke. I would say in california, i dont know that nationwide we size much of his coming out out the Great Recession even as mayor nutter talked about it, theres an antipoverty plan got put on hold until we focus on recovering. What i seen here, a number of city officials and the governor, actually injecting an equity component into the recovery plans. So we will try to capture that moment which obviously early, but since we were already a state dealing with tremendous inequities around the state, we know people of color were disproportionately impacted by covid. We have an opportunity in the recovery to do some correction on that. Mayor berke, anything you want to say on that . I mean, i think that they are right. You know, we have got to first make things safe. We are still not at a point where things are safe, and then we have really got to focus on poverty and to me moving people to the middle class. We just, weve seen that erode over time in our entire country, and cities can be great innovators when it comes to this. There are lots of things that we can do and show the way and than we had to find ways in our country to take it to scale, which is very difficult. But you have to again come back to the federalism point, you have to have participation of the state, federal and local level to make these things happen. And for us at least we want those wages to come up. Thats part of it and so a multipronged attack is the only way that that is going to happen to raise the education level, the type of Economic Development you have, the attractiveness of your city. It takes a while. Its difficult and its got to be sustained over a long period of time. If i could come unity, the mayor said something much earlier and and i do, i know we running out of time, but i do really feel, you know, there are so many differences between 2008 and 2020, and you touched on it, he touched on it and we havent talked that about it but the civil unrest, the racial strife. Covid19 has forced out into the open, in addition to the mers of george floyd, number of breonna taylor, the shooting of jacob lake, and so many ahmaud arbery, you know, so many names, so many people. And then you see black and brown people again disproportionally negatively affected by covid19. This is just brought to so much light and exposed for anyone to really see if you want to see the challenges of black people come from people, people of color in the United States of america and that with all of this happens at the same time, these issues are not going away. We dont know and intake for covid19 didnt know and intake for fiscal and we definitely dont know when are americans going to decide finally that people are going to be treated equally . We will not have these differences. We are not going to be so glaring in the inequities ineqo the so much work to be done but when, trying to look at things from an equity lens, i think that is one of the driving component of what 2020 is about and i just praying and hopeful that we dont lose sight of that as we make progress in some of these other areas. This is not a thing. Its not a moment. It is whats going on and whats happening in america. We need to make sure it remains front and center. I think that is very well put. We start off by that Small Businesses and pressures on substantially and we shouldnt forget people who are employed in the spaces are often people of color, immigrant families that are starting businesses. Cities [inaudible] and im hopeful cities can reclaim that role, made even be a better, make some reforms that some innovative mayors are trying. Thats a whole other thing we could have some of the time so i want to thank you all so much for being here. I encourage everyone to continue to engage with us at the urban institute and check out all the resources we are about all these issues that state and local level. They could so much for us. Take care. Thank you. Who will control congress in january . Stay informed on all the competitive congressional races leading up to election day with cspans campaign 2020 coverage. Watch the candidates debate and election result on cspan. Watch online at cspan. Org or listen on the free cspan radio app. Cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. This morning Washington Post political reporters react to the first president ial debate at an event moderated by opinion Writer Jonathan capehart took start watching at night eastern on cspan2, online cspan. Org or listen on the free cspan radio app. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham announced the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett will begin monday october 12 with opening statements. That on tuesday the 13th the nami begins taking questions from committee members. Chairman graham says he expects the drink will take three or four days if you can watch live coverage every day of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing on cspan, online at cspan. Org or listen live on our free radio app. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell and Vice President mike pence welcomes Supreme Court associate Justice NomineeAmy Coney Barrett to capitol hill. Members of the senate on beating with judge barrett ahead of her confirmation hearing. Well, we are pleased today to welcome judge barrett to begin the process of advice and consent in the senate. As you know she would be visiting with members who are interested in talking to her during the course over the next few days. And we are glad to have her here and glad to get the process