The following are prepared remarks for Chair Jeff Cogen's State of the County speech to the Portland City Club on Friday, March 23, 2012:
Thanks.
It’s great to be back at City Club to talk about the state of our County.
Since my first State of the County speech last year, I’ve experienced a lot …
As a father, as a son, as a local leader and as an American – all of which have helped me to focus on what I want to talk about today.
On a personal note, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who reached out to me and my family after my father’s death last month.
Losing my father – my role model and mentor – was devastating for me and my family. But hearing from so many of you gave us extra shoulders to carry our sadness.
On behalf of my family, we cannot thank you all enough.
Losing my father has forced me to think long and hard about what’s really important in life.
These thoughts are brought into stark relief as our community continues to struggle with the ongoing devastation of the economic collapse caused by Wall Street.
We face some very troubling realities:
That right here in Multnomah County nearly half our schoolchildren qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, one widely accepted measure of poverty….just think about that for a moment….Half our kids!
That the gap between the rich and the poor has grown to a point so obscene that it would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.
That the financial speculators who brought our economy to the brink of ruin are once again earning multi-million dollar bonuses while ordinary Americans struggle as never before.
No doubt about it – it’s been a very challenging year.
Made even more so, for me, by the fact that I recently turned 50 years old.
And let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like getting a solicitation to join the AARP to get a guy thinking deep thoughts.
When any of us thinks about where we thought we’d be at the start, and where we are now, it can seem like a long, strange trip.
But here’s what I do know more clearly now than ever after the past year.
Multnomah County is a truly special place with an unparalleled quality of life.
And I am right where I want to be as chairman of this amazing County.
Multnomah County is where our community’s values of equity, sustainability and compassion for the most vulnerable are acted upon every day.
Because we are at the forefront of fighting to give life to these values even as we continue to struggle through the hardest times our community has faced in decades.
I’m proud to be working with all of you to provide real community solutions to the challenges we face.
Unfortunately, in America today there are powerful forces working to undermine the very notion of community, using name-calling and divisiveness that obscure their true motives.
Community is not a popular word in the artificial world of talk radio or the worst corners of the Internet where anonymous demagogues cynically divide us into the “government” and the “people.”
And community is in short supply in Washington DC, where the bickering is so bad it brings to mind the petty squabbling of high school cliques…and compromise –an essential part of governing—has itself become a dirty word.
And sadly, even in the Oregon Legislature, grass-roots, community solutions can be blocked by powerful special interests.
Just look at how corporate lobbyists last year killed the statewide effort to stop the sale of baby bottles and kids’ sippy cups made with the dangerous chemical Bisphenol A.
When they can’t even agree to stop selling toxic baby bottles, it’s no wonder that all of us are frustrated.
Put simply, we all have good reason to wonder where our community’s values are actually reflected.
But I started my remarks today by saying that I want to talk about the state of our county.
I emphasized the word “our” because it’s here in the county where our government has proven nimble enough and responsive enough to reflect local values in crafting solutions to today’s challenges.
And if you go home from this forum today with only one message, please let it be this: there is no better reflection of this community and our values than our county.
Let me say that again: there is no better reflection of this community and our values than our county.
At Multnomah County we care for our most vulnerable people, whether that’s folks struggling with mental illness; a homeless family seeking shelter or a child asking only for a safe place to go after school.
At the County we work to protect all residents so they’re healthy and secure in their neighborhoods.
This is a place where we’re proud to be a leader in making our planet more sustainable.
And this is a government that is committed to keeping equity in the forefront of all of our decisions so that every one of the 735,000, incredibly diverse, people who live in Multnomah County can be healthy, safe and prosperous.
Ambitious goals? Absolutely.
Are we there yet? No way.
But I’m happy to report that the state of our county at the start of 2012 is strong and that we’re well-positioned to continue our innovative efforts to make this the best possible place to live and work.
Before I outline the challenges and opportunities we face in the year ahead, let me take a moment to thank the people who help this county make progress every day.
Start with our biggest strength, our incredible employees —whose great work disproves the simpletons who bash public employees at every turn.
Our employees are the glue holding the fabric of this community together.
Let me illustrate this by telling you about just one of these outstanding public servants.
Her name is Melissa Greeney, and she works in our Aging and Disability Services division putting in place safety net services to help seniors and other vulnerable people.
She’s so good at figuring out creative solutions for our community that her managers refer to her as the "fixer."
Melissa’s supervisors describe her as passionate about helping clients get the support they need when a crisis hits.
But she routinely takes it a step further.
In addition to making personal connections with the men and women she helps, Melissa is great at finding ways to partner with other organizations to stitch together the resources needed to help people.
Here’s one recent example:
A military veteran in his 70s had been living in a nursing home after falling and breaking both legs.
As he healed he wanted to get his own place so he could live independently.
But he had nowhere to go and he didn’t know where to turn.
That’s when Melissa stepped in.
She worked diligently until she found this veteran a place where he could live on his own.
Once she found him a home, she worked with community partners to get him a bed and some other basic furniture.
Today he is living independently, making him much happier while saving taxpayers up to $7,000 a month on nursing home care, all thanks to Melissa.
What makes me proudest of Melissa and the county employees she represents is her attitude.
Melissa says, and I quote: "Everyone knows that resources are almost non-existent these days. But there's something about getting something done even in the face of that that's gratifying. When you see the look on a person's face after you make something OK, it doesn't get better than that."
She’s right.
And caring people don’t get any better than Melissa.
I’m happy that Melissa was able to join us today to represent the incredibly dedicated people who make Multnomah County great.
They bring real meaning to the phrase “public servant” by working hard for all of us and with little acclaim. And we owe them all our thanks and our appreciation.
I’ll say it again: there is no better reflection of this community and our values than the work that’s done by the people in our county.
And then there are my elected colleagues on the Board of County Commissioners, who continue to create impressive accomplishments for our community.
Here are just a few recent examples:
There is simply no way that we would have just broken ground on the long overdue replacement for the Sellwood Bridge without the strong leadership and persistence of Commissioner Deborah Kafoury.
When it comes to finding jobs for our young people, or supporting emerging small businesses, there is no more effective advocate than Commissioner Loretta Smith.
Commissioner Judy Shiprack is bringing the community together to turn the unused Wikman building—an old Carnegie Library in Southeast Portland -- into a desperately needed new community center. A win for the County and for the neighborhood.
And Commissioner Diane McKeel should be proud of her leadership making sure the badly needed new East County Courthouse opens next month.
I’m also fortunate to work with Sheriff Dan Staton. In addition to working hard to keep our community safe, Sheriff Staton has been a leader in making our jails the most sustainable in the nation – and saving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars while doing it.
And Auditor Steve March is a constant watchdog over all our efforts to make sure we’re walking our talk when it comes to doing things smarter and more effectively.
I’d also like to acknowledge our partners at the City of Portland.
Commissioners Nick Fish and Amanda Fritz are with us today, along with Mayor Sam Adams.
The city and county make their greatest progress when we work together.
And that’s just what we’ve been doing: from the Sellwood Bridge to the new Mental Health Crisis Center to the Gateway Center for Domestic Violence.
But, there is no better example of that collaborative spirit in the last year than two recent breakthroughs in urban renewal.
Last year, I spoke to you at length about my concerns over urban renewal: sequestering huge amounts of tax base for as long as five decades without accounting for the tradeoffs to other vital services which will lose funding.
Those problems are real and significant.
But in the past year, the City has worked with the County to begin to address these issues.
First with the new neighborhood prosperity initiative, which the Mayor and PDC developed in closed consultation with the County.
This initiative relies on very small scale urban renewal areas in business districts in long neglected parts of east Portland.
This addresses the County’s concerns because of its focus on neighborhood economic development as a tool to fight poverty and inequality and its use of small, targeted time-limited investments.
Better yet, the new initiative enlists neighborhoods to be active participants in their own revitalization…empowering local residents to help shape their own future.
This is the sort of new thinking that can help urban renewal make sense for our community in the 21st century.
The newest partnership is found in the proposed Education District which seeks to bolster both our educational and economic development by allowing Portland State University to realize its potential as a world-class urban university.
Portland State’s continued success is vital to our community. And this urban renewal district sets the stage for the university to flourish.
But it does so in ways that support Multnomah County government and the entire community by creating an exciting new collaboration between the university and the county.
The district will help build a badly needed new home for the County Department of Human Services that will lower our operating costs while improving our service to the community.
Even more exciting, the new building will co-locate the County with related PSU departments that can provide Portland State’s expertise to the county for research and evaluation of our programs, while providing fertile ground for PSU students and faculty to advance their work.
This will enrich our entire community.
So, thank you Mayor Adams, and members of Council, for including Multnomah County in the process… for innovating… and for listening.
I know Portland State’s President Wim Wievel is here with us today….Wim, thanks for your leadership and your partnership.
I know we have this agreement worked out, but there’s just one more detail that occurs to me: you know Portland State’s motto that is that written across Southwest Broadway…I believe it reads “Let Knowledge Serve the City” …
Well, I think with this new partnership it’s time to update and broaden that mission….how about “Let Knowledge Serve the County”…it’s got a nice ring, if you ask me…
Before I outline the challenges and opportunities we face in the coming year, let me briefly look back to our successes in the past year.
I know you won’t be surprised to hear that in these tough economic times, demand for our critical services is higher than ever…
…while our ability to provide those services is limited by tight budgets.
Yet, despite these challenges, we have made significant progress over the last 12 months in Multnomah County.
Doing our work on mental health, this year we collaborated with the city, the state and community non-profits to open the badly needed new Mental Health Crisis Assessment and Treatment Center...
…a cost-effective place for people in a mental health crisis to get care, without the huge cost of going to a hospital or the indignity and danger of going to jail.
During each person’s stay, professionals work together to stabilize them…at the same time, connecting them to community resources and creating follow-up treatment plans
The result? An estimated 850 of our neighbors who have a much, much better chance each year of getting well… and staying out of jail, the hospital or the headlines.
The crisis assessment center is a clear example of a community response to a community need.
Here’s another example we all should be proud of:
Doing our work to protect our community’s health, this year we overcame the lobbying by corporate special interests that stalemated Salem and became the first county in Oregon to restrict the sale of products containing the toxic chemical Bisphenol A.
That chemical is often found in products like baby bottles and sippy cups, despite the fact that safer alternatives exist.
And Bisphenol A can leach from these bottles into what we all eat and drink.
Numerous independent scientific studies have linked low-level exposure to Bisphenol A with disruption of our bodies’ hormones as well as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and reproductive problems.
The risk is greatest for young children.
Scary stuff, but our county Health Department analyzed the potential dangers and crafted a smart, carefully targeted solution.
And our community came out in force to urge us to take action locally.
I’m proud to say our board responded with a unanimous vote to protect our community by limiting the sale of reusable beverage containers used by infants, children and adults that contain Bisphenol A.
I want to thank my Board colleagues for standing up against powerful special interests and protecting our community from this toxic chemical.
A community need … a community response.
That’s also what’s driven one of our big efforts to ensure all of our residents have a pathway to prosperity.
An incredibly important challenge at a time when economic recovery remains tenuous.
County economic development director John Tydlaska is helping to meet that challenge by overseeing a new micro-loan program that leverages 150-thousand dollars from the county to bring close to one-million dollars to small, local businesses.
This program followed a roundtable for young entrepreneurs held by Commissioner Smith last year, where the most frequent concern heard was the difficulty small businesses had in getting loans.
Thanks to this exciting, new micro-loan program small businesses - especially those headed by immigrants, women and people of color - will have better access to capital.
But it’s not just loans; our program matches small businesses with partners who can provide a helping hand with technical assistance – like accounting classes - and support – like mentorship from successful local business owners.
As a former small business owner, I know that this combination can help small businesses to achieve their potential and to create jobs for our community.
The story of Julie Derrick, the owner of JD’s Shoe Repair on Alberta Street, illustrates this well.
Julie entered the cobbler trade a few years ago and started her own business in 2009.
The business was successful and Julie soon had more customers than she could handle by herself—but her tiny space offered no room for expansion.
And expanding required capital she didn’t have.
Now, thanks to a $9,000 micro-loan, technical assistance and mentorship, she has a new location that’s three times the size of her old space and she now has five employees.
As Julie puts it, her business is one of those essential pieces of a neighborhood that allows residents to take care of things close to home.
And her business helps people save money in a very Portland way: by caring for what they have--instead of spending more to buy something new.
That’s a great success for Julie and for the neighborhood.
Unfortunately, Julie has the flu and couldn't make it here today. But please join with me in congratulating her and all the small businesses who are working with our microloan program to make our county a better place.
One of our biggest challenges this past year has been the long overdue replacement of the Sellwood Bridge.
When I came before you last year, I said the only viable path forward was through partnership.
How true that turned out to be.
In the wake of multiple challenges, we responded by collaborating with our partners in the city, state and federal government, even after one of our original partners – a certain nearby county who shall remain unnamed - unfortunately drove the project into reverse for a little while.
Together, the partners who remained persevered—and persevered –and persevered --to make this badly needed project a fully funded reality.
I’m happy to come before you today with work well underway on a brand new Sellwood Bridge that will make it safer and easier for everybody to get around our community.
The beautiful new steel deck and arch bridge will create 400 jobs per year during construction.
And we’re ensuring equity in that work because 20 percent of the construction budget will go to emerging, small businesses owned by women or minorities.
The mental health crisis center. The restrictions on Bisphenol A. Microloans supporting emerging small businesses. Finally rebuilding the Sellwood Bridge.
It’s hard not to get pumped up.
And all those accomplishments have one other thing in common besides getting me pumped up...
Each is a clear example of how our community can do great things even when times are tough - when we all pull together.
Just wait to see what we can do when times are good!
And I might add, each accomplishment is also a terrific example of the value of local solutions for local challenges.
I truly hope that our friends in the Legislature will keep that in mind whenever special interests and lawmakers from outside our area raise the prospect of pre-empting our local governments from acting to meet our community’s needs.
Multnomah County is a place where all of us own responsibility for solutions. And it’s a place where together we have proven we can find solutions—if we are allowed to.
Now, just because we made progress in 2011 doesn’t mean we can rest in 2012.
It’s been said that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
Turns out it’s also needed to maintain a vital community.
Our efforts at Multnomah County begin with getting our own house in order, becoming more innovative and efficient with limited resources.
That means looking differently at how we do businesses and questioning long-held assumptions.
For example our recent decision to encourage the redevelopment of the Morrison Bridgehead.
This surplus county property at the west end of the Morrison Bridge in downtown Portland is now surface parking lots, and has been for decades.
It’s been more than 50 years since the county acquired the property to serve as the staging ground for the construction of the bridge.
Yet for some reason the County just kept holding onto it.
And the property - one of the landmark gateways into downtown Portland - has been identified since the 1970s as a prime redevelopment site and potential location for a destination attraction.
Our board acted unanimously last year to tap that potential by starting negotiations to sell the property.
The ultimate goal is for our community to get a downtown office building with space for a projected 1,000-plus jobs.
And for a Portland public food market with 250 jobs—which would create an exciting destination for locals and tourists attracted to our vibrant food scene.
Proceeds from the $10 million-dollar purchase price would go toward a capital fund dedicated to fixing or replacing the aging downtown courthouse.
This is a project that’s responsive to our community’s needs, brings in badly needed revenues for the County, and would help keep downtown vital while stimulating economic development.
And the property would go back on the tax rolls – providing ongoing funding for the County, the City and our local public schools.
I’m happy to report today that this week we reached a tentative agreement to sell the Morrison Bridgehead in a deal that would meet every one of the goals I just identified.
A truly exciting prospect for our community.
Becoming more innovative and efficient also means essential behind-the-scenes work like switching the County to “strategic sourcing” by this summer.
In plain English, that switch means we can close a warehouse that’s been around for 50 years and have supplies delivered directly to our employees’ work sites.
This will save the county almost $1 million a year with no reduction in services to our community.
It’s also other un-sexy stuff like continuing to fine-tune our “spans of control” to make sure we aren’t management-heavy.
Our management span-of-control work is on track to lower our cost of doing business by almost $3 million a year with more to come.
I grant you that “strategic sourcing” and “spans of control” may sound wonkish… they may even make your eyes glaze over a bit…I get it.
But together these efforts will free up millions of dollars that now go to back-office administration.
And those dollars, in turn can go directly toward providing vital services for our community.
Think of these efforts as being like what so many families in our community are doing in these tough times... tight budgets drive us to be innovative and stretch our limited resources.
We’re certainly being more creative and working smarter when it comes to sustainability.
Our county is a place where sustainability is not a buzzword.
Here, sustainability means a climate action plan that has led the County to a game-changing energy efficiency strategy.
The County’s investments in energy efficiency so far are saving us $1.3 million annually through reduced energy costs - with more projects lined up in the years ahead.
And every dollar not spent heating or lighting our buildings, is a dollar available for helping people.
Our sustainability efforts have also led us to some innovative ways to meet our community’s needs.
For example, our desire to promote local agriculture lined up perfectly with our need to help hungry people in the community when we created the CROPS farm, using surplus County land to grow food for the food bank.
Last year we expanded on the model: opening our new restitution garden: a place where juvenile offenders grow food, which is later sold with the proceeds benefiting the victims of their crimes, all the while teaching the young people valuable life skills.
How cool is that? And the exciting thing is that once innovation becomes part of an organization’s DNA it just keeps building….success begetting more success ... that's what we're building here.
I’m also proud to live in a county where equity has real meaning.
Our community cannot advance by leaving anybody behind.
And moving forward requires an honest admission that too often in the past, governments would never ask the tough questions of how to help people who’ve never been invited to the table--or told there was no place at the table.
The damage was great. And looking at report after report that shows worse outcomes for communities of color locally, we must all declare once and for all that this is unacceptable!
And we must all work to reduce these disparities in health, unemployment, graduation rates, and income.
One way we are doing that at Multnomah County is by expanding on the exciting equity lens tool developed by our County Health Department.
This tool enables us to view investments we are considering through the lens of their impact on making our community more equitable.
It has already affected our funding decisions in the Health Department, for example the recent move to fund an aggressive breast-feeding promotion program for African American mothers, whose low breastfeeding rates can cause significant health problems for their children.
I am committed to bringing the equity lens to all of Multnomah County’s investments in the coming years.
To become a truly progressive community, no challenge is greater than this.
I’m also proud to live in a county that is on the cutting edge of keeping the public safe… but in a smart way.
One example is our new Community Healing Initiative for combating gang violence.
Any act of violence is one too many but each is especially painful when they touch our young men and women.
As the father of two children, I can only imagine the pain felt by a family that loses a child.
But stopping youth and gang violence requires more than just suppression and arrests.
It requires prevention and intervention to break what’s too often a generational cycle of violence in some families.
The County’s new approach recognizes that reality, and responds by intervening in that cycle by stepping up our focus on the generational roots of gangs and working with the entire families of young people affiliated with gangs.
This new approach has shown very promising results.
We are also working to fight crime by giving people re-entering our community after serving time in jail or prison the support they need to be successful.
I’d like to introduce you to one young man who’s working hard—and finding success—at re-entering our community as a productive neighbor with a job and a future.
Cori Thurman would be the first person to tell you that his life was at a crossroads after his release from a second prison stint for forgery and fraud.
But thanks to our Department of Community Justice and its non-profit partners, Cori got a helping hand through some innovative new re-entry programs.
Bridges to Change helped Cori with housing and other services, while Volunteers of America provided treatment for substance abuse.
Together, the result of that collaboration is that at age 27, Cori is on a completely different path than his previous life of addiction and crime.
Cori has been clean and sober since April 19, 2009. And he has been employed full-time at Bridgetown Bakery the last 18 months as a line lead and warehouse worker.
In Cori’s own words and I quote, “this is the best place I’ve ever been in my life.”
That’s a tribute to him and to the work done every day by the county’s Department of Community Justice and our partners to give every offender coming back to the community the best possible chance for success.
I’m very pleased Cori was able to join us today. His inspirational story deserves a round of applause.
This year, the County is also on track to achieve geographic equity in the delivery of justice.
For decades our residents in East County have had to suffer the indignity of having their only Court facilitates be cramped, leaky and vastly inadequate.
This has been an embarrassment for our community and an insult to the taxpayers in East County.
Happily, that will change in coming weeks when we open the beautiful, new East County Courthouse in the Rockwood neighborhood of Gresham next month.
This courthouse will provide not only better facilities, but a much-needed shot in the arm to a struggling neighborhood that deserves more support than it often receives.
I’m proud that this investment helps ensure that all County residents have access to justice – no matter where they live.
I’m also proud to live in a county that cares so deeply for our most vulnerable residents.
I believe a community can best be measured by how we help the most vulnerable among us.
So how do we make sure that we walk our talk of caring for vulnerable people?
We walk it by helping the more than 1,300 families and almost 500 boys and girls who are homeless in our County.
We have responded with the highly successful Rapid Re-housing Initiative championed by Commissioner Kafoury to quickly move homeless families with children out of shelter and into homes.
We walk our talk by providing opportunities for people with developmental disabilities to maintain lives of dignity by training and assisting them to do work and earn money to help support themselves….
…and by supporting seniors in living independently rather than needing costly nursing home care.
And we walk it by helping abused women—and their children—at our Gateway Center for Domestic Violence.
At Multnomah County, we live our community values through social workers who help our oldest residents and those with disabilities.
Through Sheriff’s Deputies who keep our community safe by patrolling our streets and running our jails and district attorneys who ensure that dangerous criminals face consequences for their actions.
Through our SUN schools program that provides kids the support they need to thrive in 64 schools countywide.
Through engineers who make sure our bridges are safe.
And animal shelter workers who care for dogs, cats and even the occasional rabbit.
All those programs – and many others provided by Multnomah County - are essential measures of what our community values.
There’s one more exciting new measure on the horizon that will be a dramatic gauge of our community values.
I’m talking about the health care transformation that’s happening in our state to improve the delivery of health care for people served by the Oregon Health Plan.
These changes carry huge potential for improvements in our county, which is the state’s largest health care safety net provider.
The state is looking to our county clinics as models for the coordinated care it aims to put in place statewide.
And our county, in partnership with Washington and Clackamas County – see we don’t hold grudges - is taking a leadership role in working through the nuts and bolts of this ground-breaking health care transformation that could prove a model for the rest of the country.
At its heart, this effort is designed to change the incentives in our health care system so we start focusing on keeping people healthy rather than spending a fortune trying to heal them once they are sick.
Multnomah County is ahead of the curve… already turning those values into reality every day through our network of health clinics serving low-income people throughout our community, like the new health center in Rockwood.
One regular visitor to the Rockwood health center is a man we’re happy to have join us today.
And his story is a great example of the coordinated health care we’re working to provide so taxpayer dollars are spent wisely to keep people healthy.
Mo Na’s journey to Multnomah County began when he and his family fled his native Burma.
In Thailand at a refugee camp, he lost his sight after police shot him in the face during a confrontation with the camp’s refugees.
Mr. Na settled in East County in 2007, trailed by diabetes so debilitating that he literally could not get out of bed.
He faced a grim future and massive, unmanageable medical bills.
But the team of professionals at the Rockwood Health Center worked together to address the entire spectrum of his health care needs.
They coordinate his care, calling him to remind him about appointments and to monitor his blood sugar and ensure he is taking his medications.
This proactive approach has stabilized his health, improved his life and kept him out of the hospital.
Today, he is thriving.
In the words of his daughter, “He’s at No. 1.’’
Congratulations, Mo. I’d say that’s worth a round of applause.
I’ll say it again: there is no better reflection of this community and our values than the work that’s done in our county.
Before I close, I want to talk about one of the most beloved – and most threatened - examples of our community’s strength- Multnomah County’s best-in-the-nation Library system.
Walk into the beautiful, historic Central Library just a few blocks from where we sit today- or any one of the Library’s 18 branches anchoring neighborhoods throughout our community - and there’s a good chance you’ll see children sitting criss-cross applesauce listening to a librarian read “Goodnight Moon.”
You’ll probably see adults using the libraries’ public computers to polish their resumes or the free Internet service to look for a job.
You may see a class being offered on developing your research skills or a group of recent immigrants learning English.
The library is a gathering place. An educational resource. A much used meeting facility. A neighborhood anchor…. Oh, and they have books you can borrow.
In fact, the Multnomah County Library has the second highest circulation in the country
No doubt about it—we love our libraries.
And yet despite all the community benefits of a library open to all, the Cascade Policy Institute recently released a policy paper and PR blitz that called for the Library to privatize-- or switch over to a system of direct user fees.
Benjamin Franklin must be spinning in his grave.
I disagree completely with the institute’s suggestions. But they are valuable in one sense.
They set out, in the starkest possible terms, what those who deny the value of community would do, if they could.
They would take us backward to the dark days of Herbert Hoover when those who could afford to get basic community services got them. And those who couldn’t afford it, didn’t.
That’s the antithesis of progress—and far out of touch with our community’s values.
I want all children – and when I say all children, I mean ALL children - to have access to the life-changing inspiration that comes from reading, and to the amazing programs and supports offered by our library.
I want all adults to have access to the job support and community assistance programs accessible at our libraries.
I want all seniors to know that they can get books to read, even if they are sick and housebound.
I want our libaries to serve their role as the modern commons in our community.
A place where a poor man from Rockwood can sit next to a rich woman from the West Hills and discuss this year’s Every Body Reads book.
Making the library a private service, only available to those who can afford it…yet another amenity out of reach to those at the bottom of the economic ladder… is a travesty.
That’s not the kind of community I want to live in. And I suspect it’s not the kind of community you want to live in.
But, while the County is not about to privatize our libraries, we can’t take for granted that our libraries will be able to continue to provide the great programs and services I’ve been talking about.
That’s because more than two-thirds of our libraries’ total budget comes from a temporary levy that expires this June.
If we fail to renew the levy, our library system will be devastated by massive cuts.
Our libraries need us…and we need our libraries.
If we want to keep our libaries open, we need to all pull together.
This won’t happen by itself. It is up to all of us.
There is no more urgent piece of business this year.
It is really, in a very fundamental sense, a time for this community to decide who we are…what we value…and what kind of future we want.
And once we pass the levy, re-establishing a temporary safety net to support the library, we need to begin the difficult--and long-overdue--work of creating a stable long-term funding source to ensure our amazing libraries are protected now and in the future.
The challenge ahead for the Library won’t be easy.
None of the challenges we face in the year ahead will be easy.
But nothing that’s worthwhile ever is.
After all, nothing that we have achieved up to this point has been easy.
And yet we have made great progress as a county when it comes to sustainability, equity, public safety and caring for the most vulnerable among us.
What we have learned along the way is that it’s up to each of us.
And yet it cannot be any one person’s battle alone.
We are a community. And together, driven by a passion for true progress, we can continue to be a special place.
Elizabeth Warren recently made headlines in her Senatorial race in Massachusetts by declaring that “nobody in this country got rich on their own. Nobody.”
She went on to explain that a community must stand together because it’s all of us who band together as a society that invest in basic infrastructure, education and public safety.
And that those basic building blocks are the essential ingredients for successful individuals as well as for a successful community.
We understand that here.
Everything we have achieved to date has been a result of people coming together to build this community
That’s what happens every day in our county.
And that’s what allows me to say with full confidence one final time: There is no better reflection of our community and our values than our county.
I am honored to be the chairman of our county.
I look forward to working with each of you to build our county into the truest possible reflection of our values
Together, we can make this community great, for this generation and the ones to follow…Thank you.