Transcripts For CSPAN2 Urban Institute Discussion On COVID-1

We should not lose sight of what that means for people who are still struggling and the fact we still have a very deep hole to climb out of. The socalled [inaudible] workers at the low end distribution hedonic options to work from home and federal health is already fading away. Nasa been said about what this means for cities and as we see hollowed out downtowns with your workers coming in, buying lattes and what 115th congress has called any service that depends on a smile what does that mean for city revenues . One estimate suggests especially in high rent districts, employment is still at 45 of precovid levels. We arere about to explore the sinks a bigger graph of blog, my colleagues have a blog looking at what this means for cities and look at how really depends on state revenue structure, well exposure to covid as as the highly uncertain federal policy response. If i could get the next slide, please. There we go. The point of a blog is really going into this were a lot of things we thought we knew about city economies and finances. Much of that has been upended by covid. For example, as i said it was thought to be a Success Story now many off those jobs are undr threat. Suddenly we used to think cities that successfully evaded the property tax revolt by diversifying the revenue into things like charges and fees for services or little tiny tax like Hotel Occupancy taxes which are even better, because youre basically having tourists pay those taxes and not to residents, we used to think of those cities as the winners thanks to lost their states a put on the book. Urso income tax or sales and use taxes. Now we see those revenues are vulnerable just like they are at the state level. This is from her blog today that basically shows for most cities taxes and that big chunk of the revenue but he added all of these fees and charges and tiny taxes, other taxes, that accounts for about 40 of revenues especially in big cities. Theres a lot oflith variation, purchasing if youve seen one city thing yet seen one city vignettes in one city. Or like to have a panel today that can many different types of city, not introduce our panelists. We have mayor andy burke, chattanooga, tennessee. He is a former twoterm state senator we can also speak to the perspective of the state. I think he was state senator during the Great Recession and maybe can give us insight on that experience. Hes won numerous awards, various groups of nature legislator of the year, friend of education, municipal leader of the year and held a j. D. From university of Chicago Law School at the doctors degree from [inaudible] not executive director of the league of california cities and also spentte thank you with the National League of cities in washington, d. C. So she can speak to the national perspective. When she was director of advocacy. She was a deputy mayor of the city of indianapolis will should focus on the part of a housing, of infrastructure and Community Engagement initiative and shes on manyt boards of directors including George Town School of law. Mayor Michael Nutter is a former twoterm mayor of philadelphia with 15 years of expenses will on the city council and he is the inaugural of practice and urban a public experience at Columbia University school of international and public affairs. Columbia University School of international and public affairs, senior fellow for the what works citys program and a member of the external Advisory Board for jp morgan initiative. Past president of the u. S. Conference of mayors and serves on various boards including the urban institute. Welcome to you all. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I was going to start with you, carolyn, since the lead of california cities published a report referencing cities of california. I know youre well versed in that. Can you give us a birds eye view both from the state and National Level . Im happy to do that, tracy. First, i want to thank you for putting together this conversation and also to thank the urban institute for this important conversation. Its always good for me to spend time with two of my favorite mayors, albeit one is outside of california. Good to be here with both of you. I thought i would start with a little bit of whats happening fiscally in california cities as well as part of the National View thanks to the National League of cities. Lets go back to january of 2020. City revenues were finally returning to the prerate recession levels with reserves and revenues trending positive. We werent out of the woods. Things were looking up. In march of 2020 as the covid19 took hold, u. S. Economy went into a freefall. At the local level we began to close down our local economies to prevent the spread of covid19. The impact was swift. We had to close businesses, retail sales plummeted. Unemployment sky rocketed and uncertainty was the name of the day. The fiscal impact of these swift changes were felt immediately on city budgets. Sales and Income Tax Revenues 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 dampen on demand for real estate. Not quite the case in california but certainly in other cities. I do just want to point out that given that most Cities Fiscal year 20 budget captures only a few months of the pandemic recession. It is the fiscal 21 year budgets that for most cities started july 1 that were more fully the fiscal impacts felt by cities across the country. At some point i truly believe when we look back, the toll of this pandemic on our economies could easily be more severe than that which we experienced during the Great Recession. I know well talk more about that in a few minutes. If you look at this first slide from the National League of cities 2020 fiscal condition survey, the next slide. You will see the breadth and depth of the challenges facing city budgets. According to city fiscal officers from across the country, nearly 90 of cities will be less able in fiscal year 21 than in 2020 to meet the needs of their communities. In fact, our current estimates for 2020 put year over year General Revenue Fund growth at near zero. Its been a long time since weve been at zero. On average youll see in the next slide cities anticipate a 13 decline in fiscal year 21 general Fund Revenues over what they had in 2020. Unlike the Great Recession, the impact on city budgets of covid were immediate and deep. This is not something that was gradual, that played out over 18 months or so, which is what we experienced with the Great Recession. Now i want to take a look at more specifically about what happened in california. By april 2020, just four months into the year, california cities were facing a 7 billion revenue short fall in their general Fund Revenues due to covid19. You look at the next slide, you could see that the impact of covid19 while its being felt across all of the Revenue Streams that tracy highlighted earlier, its being felt most acutely in our sales taxes and not surprisingly in our hotel bed taxes. Im in a state thats noe known for its Recreational Activities and tourism, sales and these transient occupancy taxes are key to local government Revenue Streams, and those have been severely hit. For cities, these Revenues Fund essential what i like to call bread and butter services in our communities. Services like police and fire, code enforcement, street maintenance, filling potholes. They also fund millions of Public Sector jobs. Its those jobs that are vital to a strong middle class in our country. If you look at the next slide youll see these revenue short falls in california, and im sure that my colleagues from across the country in every state has put together these kinds of numbers and certainly the National League of cities has done it as well. These short falls will have real consequences. With states facing their own budget challenges and the federal government so far providing only minimal relief to cities, we are having to go it alone. But 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 roll back Capital Projects, which is the very investment we need in our communities. As we begin to look beyond 2020, cities continue and will continue to face economic and fiscal uncertainty. Tracy, i hoped some of the good news you shared a few minutes ago does come to fruition, because our cities are going to be focused on trying to keep their communities safe from a surge in covid19 and whatever happens with the flu, but were also going to be trying to reopen our local economies and to be able to do so in a very safe fashion. I think it is precisely times like these where cities need the federal government to step up and provide assistance. Its the smart thing to do and its the right thing to do. Thank you so much, carolyn. That was just perfect in terms of the overview. I would like to turn to mayor berke and hear about whats going on the ground in your city. I know you enacted a budget that includes many of the solutions that carolyn mentioned. Had an more can you say about that . Yes. And thanks again to the urban institute and to you, tracy. It is a pleasure beyond with carolyn, who ive gotten to know over the years. Mayor nutter is someone who not only do i admire, but i know every mayor around the country is a mayor nutter fan. Great to be on with him and appreciate yall. Let me put a face to some of the things that carolyn is talking about. And to make it more explicit, lets try to back up and say a little bit about chattanooga. Chattanooga is a solidly midsized city, about 180,000person city in a county that is 375,000, and a metro that is 575,000, were squarely at the center of that donut. So we have all the things going on that midsized cities have. But we also have been doing a little bit better than most. Weve been a bit of an it city. Forbes said chattanooga would be the number one for jobs. I have to say that as a brag, mayor nutter understands that. You get paid per brag. We were fundamentally in a good position. City government built up our reserves. We had virtually twice the reserves going into march 2020 that we had going into 2009. And lots of things were going right. We had a bit of an it vibe going on. All of a sudden, covid hits, and things change immediately. We see it in Small Businesses that dont 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, of course, in city coffers because tennessee has zero income tax. Its against our constitution. We have sales tax and we have Hotel Motel Tax are our two main sources of revenue, apart from the dollars we get from other governmental sources like state and federal. And all of a sudden, that just started to vanish. And so as we hit the budget, this budget that we had started to put together and we were on a july 1 fiscal year. So, we had been anticipating putting together this really robust initiative that expanded the services that we need, that we were giving to people and also huge Capital Projects. That went away. Instead we were dealing with 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 beef up Immediate Response to homelessness, which of course no matter what youre talking about with eviction and those have gone away, you see increased homelessness in a world of 10 unemployment. All those things took precedent. At the same time, and then ill turn it back to you, tracy, i want to give poom an idea of what it looks like in real world when you enact these freezes. Its one thing to say its a freeze. Everybody says okay, thats fine. And we were lucky we didnt layoff or furlough anybody. But the realworld consequence is we freeze our fire department. That means we dont have an academy, which puts us down 30 firefighters. At the same time a Global Pandemic is going on and another 25 firefighters are out at any given time because either theyve been exposed or theyve gotten covid. Now were down 55 firefighters. And thats just one of the myriad of things that the City Government does. And thats the realworld impact of not being able to take a really studied approach to how you reduce services, but to just be in an emergency where you just freeze everything and you are where you are. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Thank you so much. Carolyn, you had mentioned the similarity and differences with the Great Recession. I cant help but plug an article that was done that says sales tax were worse than the Great Recession. I want to invite mayor nutter to comment on similarities and differences to the last recession that you might have to rename because apparently it was not so great or is not so great anymore compared to this. Thank you, tracy. And certainly to my great colleagues, carolyn and mayor berke. You know, a dozen years ago, when we hadnt even figured out that we were in recession yet, the summer 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. Thats a call you dont want. Theres no good news coming out of that call. But i didnt know. So we met. And they said well this is, again, the summer of 2008. Were not exactly sure whats going on but were seeing some unusual signs of lack of revenue, lack of collections. But well monitor it. Maybe its just a blip or an anomaly or something. So, you know, best of luck. I got that call again in august. Still hadnt learned the fundamental lesson of not taking that call or meeting. But nonetheless, you know, im a little slow on the uptake. They said theres definitely something going on. We have a problem. Were actually starting to run out of money. I said well, we just passed a budget in may that was balanced. We made investments. We spent some money. We werent frifvolous, but we spent some money. Finally in september the federal government announced that the economy had gone into recession actually back in december of 2007. So, it was a bit of a glide, if you will, into it. It just continued. As carolyn said, for some time. You make steps. You plug a hole, another hole would pop open. In this scenario, i came home from new york on the night of march 12th and on the morning of march 13th, the state announced immediate stayhome orders. And all of us basically, regardless of city, almost anywhere in the country, suddenly the economy started to shut down. People had to stay to shut down. People had to stay home. Businesses closed. Folks werent sure what their job situation was. So it was immediate. In its impact. We talked about, and caroline had some slides up. Not only is the City Government negatively impacted, of course the state, philly is a city and county, but also our School District, which heavily relies on property tax to fund the education of our children. So the city will have its own fiscal challenges and the School District at the same time. And the city and state are the primary funders of education in the commonwealth of pennsylvania. And so in 20089 we didnt make businesses close. They closed some on their own 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. So its that much more complicated. And lastly, theres no end date. Theres been a slow reoechg but there are many, many businesses, not just in philadelphia but across the United States of america, that have not reopened. Some unfortunately because weve now all been in the house six months, seven months, depending on your calendar . Will never reopen. Thats a hit economically but more in human terms to those individuals. Many cities have not fully recovered from 10, 11, 12 years ago and now find themselves under even more severe pressure. Mmhmm. I think theres sort of a good news bad news story in a way that to make you feel better about the selfinflicted damage. The research ive seen say even place thats were late to adopt this skill had a big drop in consumption. Because people were scared. Its selfinflicted but its also something you cant undo by taking off the stayathome order. People are going to show up and go back in the marketplace when theyre good and ready. Right. I think dr. Fauci has said that the virus will ultimately decide what happens here. Exactly. I just wonder what this means again about sort of what we think of as a healthy city. Mayor berke, you had talked about the idea of creating Magic Moments in chattanooga and those were all based on being a center for hospitality. Can you talk a little about sort of what you see as your vision of the city Success Story<\/a> now many off those jobs are undr threat. Suddenly we used to think cities that successfully evaded the property tax revolt by diversifying the revenue into things like charges and fees for services or little tiny tax like Hotel Occupancy<\/a> taxes which are even better, because youre basically having tourists pay those taxes and not to residents, we used to think of those cities as the winners thanks to lost their states a put on the book. Urso income tax or sales and use taxes. Now we see those revenues are vulnerable just like they are at the state level. This is from her blog today that basically shows for most cities taxes and that big chunk of the revenue but he added all of these fees and charges and tiny taxes, other taxes, that accounts for about 40 of revenues especially in big cities. Theres a lot oflith variation, purchasing if youve seen one city thing yet seen one city vignettes in one city. Or like to have a panel today that can many different types of city, not introduce our panelists. We have mayor andy burke, chattanooga, tennessee. He is a former twoterm state senator we can also speak to the perspective of the state. I think he was state senator during the Great Recession<\/a> and maybe can give us insight on that experience. Hes won numerous awards, various groups of nature legislator of the year, friend of education, municipal leader of the year and held a j. D. From university of Chicago Law School<\/a> at the doctors degree from [inaudible] not executive director of the league of california cities and also spentte thank you with the National League<\/a> of cities in washington, d. C. So she can speak to the national perspective. When she was director of advocacy. She was a deputy mayor of the city of indianapolis will should focus on the part of a housing, of infrastructure and Community Engagement<\/a> initiative and shes on manyt boards of directors including George Town School<\/a> of law. Mayor Michael Nutter<\/a> is a former twoterm mayor of philadelphia with 15 years of expenses will on the city council and he is the inaugural of practice and urban a public experience at Columbia University<\/a> school of international and public affairs. Columbia University School<\/a> of international and public affairs, senior fellow for the what works citys program and a member of the external Advisory Board<\/a> for jp morgan initiative. Past president of the u. S. Conference of mayors and serves on various boards including the urban institute. Welcome to you all. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I was going to start with you, carolyn, since the lead of california cities published a report referencing cities of california. I know youre well versed in that. Can you give us a birds eye view both from the state and National Level<\/a> . Im happy to do that, tracy. First, i want to thank you for putting together this conversation and also to thank the urban institute for this important conversation. Its always good for me to spend time with two of my favorite mayors, albeit one is outside of california. Good to be here with both of you. I thought i would start with a little bit of whats happening fiscally in california cities as well as part of the National View<\/a> thanks to the National League<\/a> of cities. Lets go back to january of 2020. City revenues were finally returning to the prerate recession levels with reserves and revenues trending positive. We werent out of the woods. Things were looking up. In march of 2020 as the covid19 took hold, u. S. Economy went into a freefall. At the local level we began to close down our local economies to prevent the spread of covid19. The impact was swift. We had to close businesses, retail sales plummeted. Unemployment sky rocketed and uncertainty was the name of the day. The fiscal impact of these swift changes were felt immediately on city budgets. Sales and Income Tax Revenues<\/a> 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 dampen on demand for real estate. Not quite the case in california but certainly in other cities. I do just want to point out that given that most Cities Fiscal<\/a> year 20 budget captures only a few months of the pandemic recession. It is the fiscal 21 year budgets that for most cities started july 1 that were more fully the fiscal impacts felt by cities across the country. At some point i truly believe when we look back, the toll of this pandemic on our economies could easily be more severe than that which we experienced during the Great Recession<\/a>. I know well talk more about that in a few minutes. If you look at this first slide from the National League<\/a> of cities 2020 fiscal condition survey, the next slide. You will see the breadth and depth of the challenges facing city budgets. According to city fiscal officers from across the country, nearly 90 of cities will be less able in fiscal year 21 than in 2020 to meet the needs of their communities. In fact, our current estimates for 2020 put year over year General Revenue Fund<\/a> growth at near zero. Its been a long time since weve been at zero. On average youll see in the next slide cities anticipate a 13 decline in fiscal year 21 general Fund Revenues<\/a> over what they had in 2020. Unlike the Great Recession<\/a>, the impact on city budgets of covid were immediate and deep. This is not something that was gradual, that played out over 18 months or so, which is what we experienced with the Great Recession<\/a>. Now i want to take a look at more specifically about what happened in california. By april 2020, just four months into the year, california cities were facing a 7 billion revenue short fall in their general Fund Revenues<\/a> due to covid19. You look at the next slide, you could see that the impact of covid19 while its being felt across all of the Revenue Streams<\/a> that tracy highlighted earlier, its being felt most acutely in our sales taxes and not surprisingly in our hotel bed taxes. Im in a state thats noe known for its Recreational Activities<\/a> and tourism, sales and these transient occupancy taxes are key to local government Revenue Streams<\/a>, and those have been severely hit. For cities, these Revenues Fund<\/a> essential what i like to call bread and butter services in our communities. Services like police and fire, code enforcement, street maintenance, filling potholes. They also fund millions of Public Sector<\/a> jobs. Its those jobs that are vital to a strong middle class in our country. If you look at the next slide youll see these revenue short falls in california, and im sure that my colleagues from across the country in every state has put together these kinds of numbers and certainly the National League<\/a> of cities has done it as well. These short falls will have real consequences. With states facing their own budget challenges and the federal government so far providing only minimal relief to cities, we are having to go it alone. But 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 roll back Capital Projects<\/a>, which is the very investment we need in our communities. As we begin to look beyond 2020, cities continue and will continue to face economic and fiscal uncertainty. Tracy, i hoped some of the good news you shared a few minutes ago does come to fruition, because our cities are going to be focused on trying to keep their communities safe from a surge in covid19 and whatever happens with the flu, but were also going to be trying to reopen our local economies and to be able to do so in a very safe fashion. I think it is precisely times like these where cities need the federal government to step up and provide assistance. Its the smart thing to do and its the right thing to do. Thank you so much, carolyn. That was just perfect in terms of the overview. I would like to turn to mayor berke and hear about whats going on the ground in your city. I know you enacted a budget that includes many of the solutions that carolyn mentioned. Had an more can you say about that . Yes. And thanks again to the urban institute and to you, tracy. It is a pleasure beyond with carolyn, who ive gotten to know over the years. Mayor nutter is someone who not only do i admire, but i know every mayor around the country is a mayor nutter fan. Great to be on with him and appreciate yall. Let me put a face to some of the things that carolyn is talking about. And to make it more explicit, lets try to back up and say a little bit about chattanooga. Chattanooga is a solidly midsized city, about 180,000person city in a county that is 375,000, and a metro that is 575,000, were squarely at the center of that donut. So we have all the things going on that midsized cities have. But we also have been doing a little bit better than most. Weve been a bit of an it city. Forbes said chattanooga would be the number one for jobs. I have to say that as a brag, mayor nutter understands that. You get paid per brag. We were fundamentally in a good position. City government built up our reserves. We had virtually twice the reserves going into march 2020 that we had going into 2009. And lots of things were going right. We had a bit of an it vibe going on. All of a sudden, covid hits, and things change immediately. We see it in Small Businesses<\/a> that dont 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, of course, in city coffers because tennessee has zero income tax. Its against our constitution. We have sales tax and we have Hotel Motel Tax<\/a> are our two main sources of revenue, apart from the dollars we get from other governmental sources like state and federal. And all of a sudden, that just started to vanish. And so as we hit the budget, this budget that we had started to put together and we were on a july 1 fiscal year. So, we had been anticipating putting together this really robust initiative that expanded the services that we need, that we were giving to people and also huge Capital Projects<\/a>. That went away. Instead we were dealing with with setting aside money for Small Businesses<\/a>, 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 beef up Immediate Response<\/a> to homelessness, which of course no matter what youre talking about with eviction and those have gone away, you see increased homelessness in a world of 10 unemployment. All those things took precedent. At the same time, and then ill turn it back to you, tracy, i want to give poom an idea of what it looks like in real world when you enact these freezes. Its one thing to say its a freeze. Everybody says okay, thats fine. And we were lucky we didnt layoff or furlough anybody. But the realworld consequence is we freeze our fire department. That means we dont have an academy, which puts us down 30 firefighters. At the same time a Global Pandemic<\/a> is going on and another 25 firefighters are out at any given time because either theyve been exposed or theyve gotten covid. Now were down 55 firefighters. And thats just one of the myriad of things that the City Government<\/a> does. And thats the realworld impact of not being able to take a really studied approach to how you reduce services, but to just be in an emergency where you just freeze everything and you are where you are. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Thank you so much. Carolyn, you had mentioned the similarity and differences with the Great Recession<\/a>. I cant help but plug an article that was done that says sales tax were worse than the Great Recession<\/a>. I want to invite mayor nutter to comment on similarities and differences to the last recession that you might have to rename because apparently it was not so great or is not so great anymore compared to this. Thank you, tracy. And certainly to my great colleagues, carolyn and mayor berke. You know, a dozen years ago, when we hadnt even figured out that we were in recession yet, the summer 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. Thats a call you dont want. Theres no good news coming out of that call. But i didnt know. So we met. And they said well this is, again, the summer of 2008. Were not exactly sure whats going on but were seeing some unusual signs of lack of revenue, lack of collections. But well monitor it. Maybe its just a blip or an anomaly or something. So, you know, best of luck. I got that call again in august. Still hadnt learned the fundamental lesson of not taking that call or meeting. But nonetheless, you know, im a little slow on the uptake. They said theres definitely something going on. We have a problem. Were actually starting to run out of money. I said well, we just passed a budget in may that was balanced. We made investments. We spent some money. We werent frifvolous, but we spent some money. Finally in september the federal government announced that the economy had gone into recession actually back in december of 2007. So, it was a bit of a glide, if you will, into it. It just continued. As carolyn said, for some time. You make steps. You plug a hole, another hole would pop open. In this scenario, i came home from new york on the night of march 12th and on the morning of march 13th, the state announced immediate stayhome orders. And all of us basically, regardless of city, almost anywhere in the country, suddenly the economy started to shut down. People had to stay to shut down. People had to stay home. Businesses closed. Folks werent sure what their job situation was. So it was immediate. In its impact. We talked about, and caroline had some slides up. Not only is the City Government<\/a> negatively impacted, of course the state, philly is a city and county, but also our School District<\/a>, which heavily relies on property tax to fund the education of our children. So the city will have its own fiscal challenges and the School District<\/a> at the same time. And the city and state are the primary funders of education in the commonwealth of pennsylvania. And so in 20089 we didnt make businesses close. They closed some on their own because of an economic worldwide crisis. This was a Health Crisis<\/a> 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. So its that much more complicated. And lastly, theres no end date. Theres been a slow reoechg but there are many, many businesses, not just in philadelphia but across the United States<\/a> of america, that have not reopened. Some unfortunately because weve now all been in the house six months, seven months, depending on your calendar . Will never reopen. Thats a hit economically but more in human terms to those individuals. Many cities have not fully recovered from 10, 11, 12 years ago and now find themselves under even more severe pressure. Mmhmm. I think theres sort of a good news bad news story in a way that to make you feel better about the selfinflicted damage. The research ive seen say even place thats were late to adopt this skill had a big drop in consumption. Because people were scared. Its selfinflicted but its also something you cant undo by taking off the stayathome order. People are going to show up and go back in the marketplace when theyre good and ready. Right. I think dr. Fauci has said that the virus will ultimately decide what happens here. Exactly. I just wonder what this means again about sort of what we think of as a healthy city. Mayor berke, you had talked about the idea of creating Magic Moments<\/a> in chattanooga and those were all based on being a center for hospitality. Can you talk a little about sort of what you see as your vision of the city Going Forward<\/a> . Has it changed or are you just sort of hoping to ride this out . Well, we are at the urban institute, so we have to use the word density at least a few times. You know, for the first seven years that i was mayor i ran around saying the word density everywhere, weve got 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 moment or magical moments was what i would talk about. How do we create that . And the answer was density. Its through entertainment and the times that we spend with others because to me at least the one thing that we could create in cities that you couldnt get anywhere else was that experience that this is the only time and the only place that youll be able to have this experience. And thats what was making sports and music and all those other things, inperson dining, so valuable. Six months ago after seven years i 1207d saying density, density, density, and started saying no density, no density, no density anywhere. And 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, you know, ultimately one of the great things is people will be able to gather in large groups. I mean, i do think that we are in a position right now where our personal habits are changing and i know from my experience if my wife and i receive an invitation to something and its a zoom, webinar type circumstance were like okay, great, we can just sit in our living room and do this and turn off the camera and, you know, not dress up and that sounds really good. So we dont do any of these inperson things. I do think that there are limits to this. And that it may be a long time, and i dont expect it to be short, but we will eventually start to find ways when we feel safer. I think a big piece of this is i dont feel safe going into large crowds. I dont feel safe. I dont do we have inperson dining open in our state. I dont do it. But there will be a moment where i feel safe again and i do start to miss those start to think oh, this great experience is happening and it feels safe and it feels natural and it feels right. And cities have always come back. They will always come back because there are magical and unique things that happen there that cannot happen anyplace else. Mmhmm. Now, i wanted to talk more about what it looks like when cities come back. Carolyn, i had said something in one of our earlier conversations about how you really should think of every dollar that a city spends as a service or a job. Can you sort of talk about what a city looks like if its cut its budget and what kind of services, businesses, residents should be expecting when cities do start to come out of this . Yeah. Boy, i wish we could predict the future a little better. I think what mayor berke highlights and what mayor nutter highlights is theres 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 were going to be using as much as it is were going to be living with this and were going to adapt how we do that. You know, 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 the budget and cut a dollar here, cut a dollar there. But every dollar that a city spends funds a salary or it funds a service that that community has prioritized as something it needs. Im sure both of these mayors can give you many stories about constituents, the meetings theyve been in, and the need for more police service, the need for better trash pickup. Somebody always needs a pothole 23i8d in a community. So 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<\/a>, the Public Service<\/a> job. Those are the folks who are at the heart of our communities. I talk a lot about the local government workforce, which is probably in the 50 millions across this country. 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 day to day. 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 out here in the middle of a state that has wildfires, 28 of them 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 slash city budgets 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. Weve got to do both. Thats why ill continue to come back to we need a better partner in the federal government to help us out. Absolutely. Yeah. I do want to talk about that in a second. I cant resist asking mayor nutter, what does that look like in philadelphia as the city was coming back with a diminished workforce . Because i know look at the data there are some areas of local employment that never came back from the Great Recession<\/a>, especially for noneducation jobs that people might have to be putting a face to. Do you feel like it costs money to hire someone, to train someone, to get them ready to do the job. What does that look like for you . Well, there are a couple things. First of all, i mean, we were i made a decision that and this is not to compare and contrast philadelphia to any other place because every place is different. But made it 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 always has the highest poverty rate of the ten largest cities in the United States<\/a> of america. Its been over 20 for now 40 years, and it is in a generation al and deeply entrenched. We can talk more about that a little later. But also i did not want to damage the heart and soul of the government which there are so many things that you can use technology more, you can mechanize, but there are many, Many Services<\/a> where you actually do need people. And so what i was constantly thinking about while were in the recession was that one day this will be over. Wed like to take the same thing about covid19. But i did actually believe that this part of the Great Recession<\/a> back at that time would end and that we had to have the people in place to be able to provide services to even carry us through the recession and benefit from recovery. But in that moment you also had to rethink all the services youre providing and all the people who are doing all this work, do we need to continue to do all of these things . Are we the best provider of that service . And as both carolyn and the mayor said, yes. There is a constituency for every service. Unfortunately, it just doesnt necessarily mean that we should be the provider of it or that we can. And so when the team comes to you and says here are your options, i can assure you that its a series of all bad options. And what youre trying to figure out is the least worst of those options. How do you protect Public Safety<\/a> . How do you look after your most vulnerable population . How do you protect the heart and soul of the government . I mean, someone has to take in the few dollars that are being sent, that people are still paying their taxes. Someones got to deal with payroll. Employees need to get paid. Debt service. Other obligations that you have to pay. You know, your social services, your prisons. These are mandated. Obligations that you have. Someone has to provide those services. And so we did shrink the government. We did stop providing some services. But i can assure you, tracy, that 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. But i would say, and i know you want to get to it, but we also had a great partner. In the federal government. Seven of my eight years i served with president obama, Vice President<\/a> bidens administration. So we had the economic recovery. We had the stimulus. We had tiga. We had ara. There were a million calls and a coordinated strategy. Nationally the cities, u. S. Conference of mayors, National Association<\/a> of counties, all of us trying to figure out and working in partnership how many calls, carolyn knows this, and the mayor may as well. How many calls with valerie jarrett, president obama, secretary napolitano, secretary johnson, Shawn Donovan<\/a> at hud. Every cabinet secretary hosting some kind of call to try to help us as cities. We were not alone in this. And i have to say today as i talk to a bunch of mayors and another mayor does and carolyn does as well, but many of these cities today feel that they are on their own. They are just out there, struggling, trying to make something happen and that washington has really kind of checked out. And that is a big difference between 08 and 2020. Its a difference from natural disasters and other well, heres 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<\/a> trying to figure all of this out. There is still, seven months later, there is still no known National Strategy<\/a> to deal with covid19. Now, if it was a hurricane, if it was a tsunami, if it was Severe Weather<\/a> event, you know, 25 inches of snow, whatever the case may be, there are plans to deal with that. Youre not alone. You ask everyone to stay at home so you can clear the streets. And then eventually it melts or you move it or you 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, so folks are just kind of hanging on and trying to ride this thing out, however far it goes. You know, im not a it is real. When we have to make the decisions. In the clear path from the federal government. Sometimes they are conflicting. And 16. These are the real. Ho as you talk about the srefighter. R. We have really seen it. They were City Government<\/a>. Except on schools here we had have over the last six months. With the federal government. I dont know if we can say it is on a different page. Er we have different comments. Its on these different page from them. The county and that city had not been able to get together on what should be happening. So when communication is one of the most important pieces of a Public Health<\/a> response people are hearing at least four different messages of all the people that theyre supposed to trust in their staggered and unbelievable ways. Instead of making it easy for people we have made it extremely hard for them. At the same time this takes place in a dynamic where especially in a place and carolyn has a different political. You have the red state and blue city in a state like tennessee on a fundamental level the State Government<\/a> has not been responses to cities or years on what they want. This is another reason to say you need to cut your services. You need to scale back. And this has been really troubling to me. There is a way to get back there but a global is not conducive to four different responses i will leave you with this. Chattanooga on the line with georgia and the suburbs. We have a math mandate. But no rural county around us has one and neither does anyone in northern georgia. That affects our hospitals in our workforce d and everything that we are doing. T are dealing with a Global Pandemic<\/a> that the response of little line that you draw the map. Instead of multiple layers deciding what they should do that is different from each other. I have heard it in both of the comments from the mayors. They will have a great deal of confidence there. If we keep hearing for different viewpoints. What should you do. The private sector is just as confuseded about what they can do and cant do. At were really setting herself so far back and getting the Public Confidence<\/a> again that they can go dying and shop are recovery from the pandemic is to be twice what it might normally be. Whether or not you should wear a mask. We are seven months into this. Im confused. What are you talking about. You have to be there to figure out. That might be helpful to yourself or to someone else. Before at that fundamental level in this discussion and how do you get to the next be slightly more crowded place even outdoors what happened indoors. Go back to school. Go into an office building. It all builds on each other. It is about confidence. And then my goodness. What will happen one day when there is a vaccine. And that that next level of debate. Who gets it and why. Im not taking it you dont have to. All of those kinds of issues. We have some Serious Trust<\/a> and credibility issues at a time of crisis be on adding in the political mix. We will go to q a please submit your questions. I wanted to back toto carolyn for a second. I am im californian by birth. E for this crisis. Housing affordability et cetera. Those issues are not going away if anything they are getting worse. The mayors have no choice but to try to leadg, through adversity what kind of leadership are using. Were the ones from tennessee. That is just in pragmatism at the local level. Pre pandemic. Housing and affordability. We all needal for structure investment. Ty keeps it strong. And the impact is so exacerbated with the underlying challenges that were already in place. I dont know the local official that will walk away from that. Theyre gonna look at can look at the resources they have. And assets they head in place. As they mentioned. They will make choices about who delivers what service. There to find ways to forge ahead. The state and the federal government will follow our lead and make 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 cities still because we are the economic engines of this country. We are the places where innovation happens. Over 80 of the residents in our country reside. In several coverage will start with us. If i can add to that. It is right nowad of the mayor. We have a Global Pandemic<\/a>. We have a recognition for 400 years of racial injustice. We have it to me the psychological issues that come from all of the turmoil together in this challenge. For all of us. E this is only going to be worth it if we can come back better and stronger and there is a a way for us to do that but we have to have a partner in the federal government to make that happen. Thate main reason for because he raise revenues. We can have tremendous problems. We have to head revenue raisedd the rate that helps with some of the problems. Just because that is the only way we can deal with the problems. We cant get revenue our way out of this on the local level. We have to get the federal partnership. I think about this as an economic asteroid that hitshe but you can use a weather analogy. The local governments are not efficient to raise government in a way that they will help them solve through crisis. I think a couple of you had mentioned with unprecedented budget reserves not enough to deal with this crisis it seems to me that there is no way that things that are proceeded in the 21st century. Is there a way to modernize the institutions to respect the volatility of. Make sense for the worldil that we are in today. I think those measures were put into place i was around at the timeo but ive read a little bit about it takes a sound asleep does not seep and serious flow. We oversight entity which is about to expire. From the brink of bankruptcy. Our charter requires a balanced budget. We dont print money. That level of physical discipline is critically important. L you start removing those roles youll find literally going tenkrupt. Some of the agencies would go crazy. I think that is potentially the worst selfinflicted wound. It is mortgaging the future to try to live in current times. I agree with the mayor. About the significant dollars with an outside source. Let me answer that. The balanced budget does a couple of things. Add to local credibility. Actually really critical. It is great for us to have it. The second piece is thattly we dont control the treasury. We dont control the fed. The federal government when it comes to thatdo has some huge images with me and balance. They just had different Resources Available<\/a> to them that we dont. It is more dangerous that. I will say. This all the time. Its like economics 101. That we should get every dollar out on the street. It is important for us to continue to do Capital Projects<\/a> to maybe borrow a little bit more now than. We are aaa bonded rating. We can do some things that other people cant we have to make sure that we arere doing this but i thinkn that figuring out what those are. And then for cities on the local level that dont have income taxation. Progressive taxation. For us to ramp up our spending and dont want to balance the different situation than the federal government. R the question about sales taxes. The negative expectations are contrary to activity. At least through august. T the aunt restaurants or Food Services<\/a> there are many other things g that are part of that detailed tax base. And through the in restaurant. To piggyback on if you can talk about expectations. More stable. E it did affect property taxes in this case. Nevertheless we are not seeing that lens. I just wonder if you could comment on that i can at least start with that for chattanooga. It is about 270 million operating budget with about 50 million of capital per year. That a hundred Million Dollars<\/a> for race dash waste water. It ends up being about 420 million or so. And things had been because of the cares act. In the 600 per week beneficial. We havent seen the massive drop. There is huge issues. With the hospitality industry. We have huge sectors of our city that is just really struggling. Particularly local businesses. When it comes to oura sales tax what we budgeted for this year operation dollars was an eight halfmillion dollar loss. When you take relatively fast 3 loss is relatively flat. Health healthcare and Everything Else<\/a> cost more. Eight halfMillion Dollars<\/a> for us is a very significant loss at a time where expectations in need is growing by leaps and bounds and our general is that our sales tax again has been growing in the neighborhood of 10 . Need a four or 5 drop in the 10 increase is in the massive difference for us. You mentioned some expenditures that were going up because of m two. That funding goes away at the end of this year. I think the worst year is 2021. People are going into this with fiscal 24. It would be nice to have more help on that revenue shortfalls. Directly related to the pandemic. Let me just say again. Those dollars went to the state. When they want to reimburse cities that thats actually happening. Thank you. I wanted to talk about the longmont issue that were talking about before. Theres a couple of questions that came up based on what you know now on the poverty. What do you see as poverty combating strategies that be looking at in the next several years. The first thing is certainly coming in to the Mayors Office<\/a> in 2008. I mentioned i had been a city councilmember for a while. I know that we had have a poverty challenge and had had one for a long time. I think in retrospect. I would have loved to have started our work on developing our plan but quite honestly the recession got in the way. You can only do some things at a time when you are attacked trying to save the city from the brink of running out of money, its just that much more difficult to work on such massive issues. It is still being utilized. After my time the property rate has come down. Over the past few years. It went up during the recession. It has slowly come back down. It is really about education and skills. We had hundreds of thousands of people not reading at a level that they could get computer literacy. That recession now this one. And a health the Health Crisis<\/a>. How do we retrain. At the same time, philadelphia is invested by the heavy presence of education and medicine with 37 percent of the jobs in philadelphia. Training and certificate and the like i think would be helpful to leading adelphia and many other cities. I wish we had been able to start earlier. We were literally trying to save the city from going broke. In california i dont know that nation might recite as much of this coming of the Great Recession<\/a> even and they talked about it. There is tight w poverty plan and had put on hold. What i have seen here. A number of city officials in the government are injecting a component into the recovery kind. We can and try to capture that moment obviously early. Since we were already estate dealing with tremendouss equities around about the states we know that people of color were disproportionately impacted. Opportunity to do some correction on that. Is there anything you want to say on that. I think they are right. We have to make things safe we are still not in a point where things are safe. And we got to focus on poverty and to meet living people to the middle class we have seen that in a road over time and our entire country. And cities can be great innovators when it comes to this. There are a lot of things that we can do and show the way. And ways in the country to take it to scale. You had to head participation at the state and local level to make these things happen. We want those wages to go up. Thats part of it. A multipronged attack is the only way that that is into raise the educational level. The attractiveness of your city. It takes a while. Its difficult. Its gotta be sustained over a long. Of time. E. The mayor have something much earlier. I know we are running out of time. But i do really feeltm that there are some differences between 2008 andll 2020. You touch on it he touched on it. The civil unrest they had forced out into the open. In addition to the murders of george floyd and the murder of rhianna taylor in the shootingrc of jacob blake and so many others. So many names and some new people. Black and brown people negatively affected by covid. This is brought to so much light and exposed out for everyone to really see. If you want tot see the challenges of black people and brown people in the united seates of america. Then when all of this happened at the same time these issues are not going away. We dont know an end date for covid. We dont know an when and date for fiscal distress. When our americans can at the site. That people are good to be treated equally. When i can have these differences. When i can be so glaring in the inequities. So there so much work to be done. When they talk aboutla looking at things from equity lens. It is one of the driving components of what 2020 is about. Im praying and hopeful that we dont lose sight of that. As we make progress in some of these other areas. This is a thing. It is whats going onin and whats happening. We need to make suret that it remains front and center. We started off talking about Small Businesses<\/a> and aressures. The people that up are employed in that. The immigrant families they had beenat machines. Maybe based on some of the forms that im seam. M. I need to wrap things up. Ink you so much for being here. Encourage everyone to continue to engage with us and check out all of the t research that we have. Thank you so much for being with us. Take care. You are watching into your unfiltered view of government. Come created by the Cable Television<\/a> company as a Public Service<\/a> and brought you today Mega Television<\/a> providers. This is the university of utah all wear tomorrows Vice President<\/a> ial debate will take place they are working on preparations inside. The bureau chief. It will be moderating that debate between Vice President<\/a> mike pence in democratic challenger President Trump<\/a> and several white house staffers tested positive and theyre asking for more space between podiums also the divider. Those changes are being made today. I those changes are being made today. I dont think when the dust settles in the election is whether america becomes more republican or democrat whether we are more liberal or more conservative. I think the choice in this election is whether america remains america. And as we have said from the moment he entered this race it is about the soul of our nation it is about the soul of our nation what we stand for. And maybe most importantly we want to be. Watched Vice President<\/a> ial debate between Vice President<\/a> mike pence in senator, paris. Live wednesday at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. Watch the debate live on cspan. Listen live on the cspan radio and go to that. Org for life or on demand streaming of the debate coverage. Theres also a link to each debate question and answer. Watch our president ial debate video from the ccn video library. Members are on break for two weeks after several senators have for covid. We will have live coverage of todays session","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia601909.us.archive.org\/31\/items\/CSPAN2_20201006_142700_Urban_Institute_Discussion_on_COVID-19_Impact_on_Cities\/CSPAN2_20201006_142700_Urban_Institute_Discussion_on_COVID-19_Impact_on_Cities.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20201006_142700_Urban_Institute_Discussion_on_COVID-19_Impact_on_Cities_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}