good afternoon and welcome to hope college it is a tremendous privilege for the college to hose this event every year you know this is not only one of the great highlights of the two at a time festival but it's also em of a relationship between a community and a college that share a common founding and we hope are experiencing an especially important year in the next twelve months as we have just begun a celebration the hundred fiftieth anniversary of our founding and this will be this will be a year of celebration not only for the college but for the community of holland as well and we are excited about the plans that we have to involve you in commemorating this wonderful relationship that we all enjoy between a college and a great it is my privilege to extend a special welcome on behalf of all of us to governor rick snyder it is an honor to have you with us governor for a fifth time we're grateful that you make time on your schedule every year to be a part of this occasion and also i just want to say how appreciative we are of our mayor curt dykstra this is his fifth time to join us at this event as mayor of holland but it's also his last and i know that you will join me in wishing him our very best as he moves on to assume the presidency of a college and to leave behind a community that will always be grateful for his service you again welcome and let's get things under way indeed the downsides of the festival luncheon becoming so popular is that all year long or ever i am sometimes in kind of appropriate places people stop me and say hey what are you planning on doing for the luncheon this year we really want to see the video so peter jumped out of the shore he got to the beach where jesus had already prepared a meal for them i cannot wait for them to have time watch jesus fix the meal all of the disciples are there you have a little bit of success people like what you do are all of a sudden it takes on a people think i work on this all year long right i have a crack team of seasoned pros working hard and getting paid a long dollar for helping me out but the video job promoting our great state from our natural beauty to our timeless traditions like tulip time in holland here michigan has a special time every year and i can't wait to go back this year to see what creative things marriage dykstra does at the governor thank you good morning everyone and my deepest apologies to our guests from the netherlands for that slaughtering of an otherwise beautiful tongue it is a real pleasure to be with you again this year pleasure to gather together as a community for this wonderful event governor snyder always thank you for being here so much it is great to have you here and let me take this moment to introduce for the audience today the folks who are seated before you at the head table first of all beginning on my right to your pritchard the vice president of blue cross blue shield michigan something i forgot i got a big acronym here and i cannot remember what all stands for michigan that's ok it's all you need to know welcome pat thank you for being here forest president john knapp president of hope college who you've already heard from today john it's always a pleasure to be on campus and thank you for hosting  irwin who is the president of west michigan for huntington bank and huntington of course this year again is the principal sponsor of this luncheon so john great to have you and thank you for the sponsorship a our who is the wonderful executive director of to look time incorporated is a separate and great organization works closely with the city but does its own thing and has its own board and going to do a wonderful job so thank you for that in a moment i'll ask you to rise for the presentation of the colors which this year as in previous years will be done by the city of holland the partner of public safety honor guard today we're pleased to have the pledge of allegiance one who will be led by our latin americans united for dimensions or our group following the national anthem please remain standing for then the dutch national anthem and then dr knapp will lead us in the invocation for today's meal and then and only then can you enjoy lunch so if you please ri will you please join me in prayer for the beauty of the earth for the glory of the skies a gracious and loving god we give thanks for the joys of this season when the greening trees and blossoming tulips remind us that you are faithful in making all things new we are grateful to live in this special place and we seek your blessings on our community and state we pray for all of those in positions of leadership that they may serve with wisdom and discernment please be present with us in this gathering bless this meal and all those who have worked hard to make this occasion possible may we be ever mindful that you are our creator and sustainer amen please be seated enjoy your meal and the program will get underway shortly well that's hot we hope that you have enjoyed luncheon please continue to enjoy it we're going to get the program started because rumor has it there's something that follows this luncheon today i have no idea what that is but  say a nice thanks and express our appreciation for those who labored hard to prepare lunch for us today this year as in previous years we are very pleased to have with us guests from when i other places i suppose as a way to say it i'm not sure it's the best way to say it but that's what came to mind we are pleased to  welcome some diplomats from foreign nations to our wonderful field house today first of all i'd like to and when i say their name if they'd rise and and sort of greet with a wave the assembled masses we would appreciate kla temple consul general from the netherlands based in chicago on a guys here please thank you thank you lee's do express my deep in sincere apologies to embassador baking prime minister roots and the king and queen for the butchering of the language a bit ago the concert they actually the  embassy sent us nice audio files of the wonderful dutch phrases and they would read them and then this and i will say it slower still too fast still very very much too fast thank you for being here we are also from the netherlands are pleased to you we are pleased to have our secretary of state ruth johnson here and ruth is all in she's got her dutch outfit on already excellent  and we're really pleased that freshman representative and she's tired of hearing it daniela garcia our wonderful state rep from this part of the world you're in her district right now took it upon herself in addition to joining the letter to come to the luncheon to assemble a group of state legislators with her so we do have the speaker of the house kevin carter with us today the senate majority leader also were in his district arlen macof as well as the house majority floor leader eric nesbit welcome to all we additionally have other state reps with us i know i saw senator shoot maker i see representative and hewlett here and i know there are others so we have other state reps who are with us today would you please rise so we can see who you are and greet you as  younger wonderful thank you all very much and then we have local government folks here to force the home city council is here and i've asked my colleagues on the council to rise if they would care to even be associated with me any more we also have governmental reps from the city of zealand here as well as holland township park township ottawa county and i believe i saw commissioner story here from allegan county as well so if you would all rise so we could recognize you and express your th we this is my last and hope we got earthquake you know just getting i didn't quite tell the camera guy the opening line but he's smart fellow and no we're not talking about the vote results from yesterday not that earthquake the you know i will tell you that i thought i had really gone to pretty extreme lengths to avoid having to walk in parades and wooden shoes you know taking a new job moving two states away governor you have outdone me you mean the injury thing that's that's a stroke of genius to avoid wooden shoes my goodness most impressive it gives me great pleasure at this time to introduce  who will introduce the board of directors of tulip time to us all as well as to say special words of thanks to the many generous sponsors who make the festival possible when thank you kurt i really don't think i can top his video at all so bear with me i would like to welcome all of you to the eighty sixth two time we are so pleased that you're joining us along with all of our special guest today and i think by the time we could get through the whole list this whole room would be standing to be able to recognize you and the role that you play in the importance of tulip time so first i would like to thank our board of directors that they could stand they've really guided supported and fostered our mission of tulips tradition in transition so thank you so much they are scattered around our sponsors make it possible for us to accomplish our mission of inviting the world to join the dance and if you are trying to get around town this weekend it was a little gridlock down there we had so many visitors here it was a beautiful weekend in the kick off and it was really great but today i would like to thank our luncheon sponsors huntington bank and supporting sponsors of blue cross barton mallow the new construction company of the new power plant and the holland visitors b there's representatives from those who are going to say sions could you please stand so we could thank you to a very special partnership that we have with the visitors bureau and sally wood she has assisted tulip time with a broader reach in advertising than we could ever have achieved sally has been appointed to the governor snyder by governor snyder to the michigan travel commission and joining us from travel michigan today are david west and dave lorenz this is david west's first time in a dutch costume and he will be scrubbing the street so we're really excited about that  also have most of the travel commission with us as well as representatives from midwest living and t v and radio personalities so all of you can stand it appreciate that on behalf of the board of directors i would like to read recognize the grand marshals of this year's parade larry cope's today's casino vox parade larry has recently retired from fifth third bank and has been a long supporter longtime supporter of the festival both personally and through the bank and we are pleased to honor him today for your commitment to community larry next i have two very adorable children to introduce you to kian hogan and max here in j c i can be a parade kids helping kids grand marshals these are two extraordinary ten year olds keane's journey started when she and her quadruplets sisters were born thirteen weeks early kian leads a medically complex life that includes twenty four hour nursing care she beats the incredible odds stacked against her with a smile on her face always her school classmate max at a very young age realized that some financial support might ease the burden of the medical bills on her family and he started a program called cancer kian it was a campaign which raised over sixteen thousand dollars and he's ten years old in addition to the campaign mexted something  i hope you can see them all they're a little shorter than the rest of us and saturday's g m b music parade grand marshal is jim drier he has set eighteen world records and has partnered with habitat for humanity since two thousand and twelve h completed incredible feats including pulling a half ton of bricks across lake st clair and kayaking across the us from lake michigan to the gulf of mexico he recently announced the mighty mack swim across the straits of ma each year we introduce new elements and surprise to surprise and delight you last summer we strategized and we realized that we had limited programming around one of our main objectives in our mission statement can you guess what that is tulips while there are over four and a half million to what's planted we did not have any programming around tulips or gardening so we started talking with p alan smith one of america's most recognized award winning garden and design expert to put together some new events in fact he's filming a segment this week around holland that will air next summer on p b s this year we are also partnering with bethany christian services and are attempting to break the world record for the most people dancing in wo pella iowa has the current record and i think that we can all join the dance and break that record all you need is wooden shoes you do not need a costume it's a very simple dance and you can find that on you t through our website we do ask that you try to sign up there is nine hundred thirty five of you here today we need twenty seven hundred to break the record thursday seven fifteen centennial park and i hope to see you all there so what does all of this mean tallent well we think a lot we know that our guests traveled from all fifty states as well of visitors from over thirty countries approximately four hundred fifty thousand people converge on holland over the eight days of the festival and the hotels are nearly full this year we are conducting an economic impact and demographic study through a grant from the community foundation of holland zealand this will give us updated information and help us with future programming decisions and i look forward to sharing the results with you later this summer and leslie i would like to recognize mayor he's the hollands of fortieth mayor and as you know as we talked about he is leaving holland to his newly appointed position as the president of trinity college in chicago we thank you for your leadership the last six years and the funny videos that you produced and we want to wish curtly giuliana and emma a safe new world in illinois but know that they will always come back home so if we can acknowledge them heard always works walks in his wooden shoes for the parade but he doesn't have a special pair of these that says he's been our mayor since two thousand and nine so we hope you will wear them today  that was great when thinks and dr knapp huntington bank is going to be celebrating one hundred fifty years next year as well maybe we should do to twice or something to celebrate together the two a festival clearly depicts the city beauty that leader rogers had in vision many years ago but it goes further encompasses now civic engagement leadership people working together to improve the lives of community members by supporting over eighty community nonprofit sustaining hundreds of jobs promoting the arts and culture especially among our youth to a time as a model for governor snyder is relentless positive action estimated to bring in ten million dollars to the overall impact of holland and another fifteen million in investments to michigan area as going no to two thousand fifteen will be the first year that we formally quantify to uptimes value to the region with this community and down the grant the initiative a test i believe to the strategic thinking of the leadership of the time group here and continue to show how if this is a pure michigan event huntington is also intensely dedicated to the communities with three hundred fifty colleagues working in this area and with our connection with the peer michigan business connector we committed to lend two billion dollars to small business and commercial businesses we're continually looking for more as we continue to invest in michigan throughout the state and in the lakeshore region governor snyder holland and huntington though they are committed to proving our communities by reinventing the way we educate attract and retain the workforce to reinvigorate our economy and what's really need is the voice that you're carrying forward is not only around the nation now but around the world in terms of how we're being recognized so thank you for all your work that you're doing there in the coming weeks as you heard we will continue to grow the connections to michigan when we're going to have the that king and queen visit in june one of the first things will have on their agenda is to invite him to a to a time of it would that be cool governor as you know this is the seventieth year that a governor has us what the streets i don't know what you're going to do about that today maybe just a quick one and will to call it that so but several people are going to be looking forward to grabbing their broom to sweep in the street today they have a lot of fun so ladies and gentlemen i you thank you very much and i appreciate that and thanks everyone for a great opportunity join you again this is a special event and i apologize i won't be outs in the streets i really want to but with my achilles what i was told is wooden shoes are not on the physical therapy approved list but it's always exciting to be back and i want to recognize our consul generals we always appreciate your presence to bring in a national flavor to this from other countries and with respect to the netherlands it's great to have our consul general here and also to have the visit of the king and queen that's truly a special honor i want to three stops that they're making happen come to michigan is something special and you should be proud and we'll have a great opportunity to show the michigan michigan  to thank my partners in the legislature for being here we work hard and i appreciate the great support and you're going to see them in costume today in many cases and i'm looking forward to that this particular way we have a number of new members in costume but it's a great group and so it's exciting to be here i want to give my special thanks though to the mayor the mayor has done a great job these years i've always looked forward to his presentations his videos in fact what i should have figured out i actually made a mistake mayor figured this out that if i really wanted proposition one to pass i should have had to make a video it i had a great opportunity i blew the outline i'm sure it would have been fabulous to the i'm actually i know what it would have happened as central avenue i would have ended up in a six foot pothole up to here probably up to my eyes but what happens when you have a situation like this to be open and proposal one is it's just realize positive action there's no one to blame there's no one to fight with we just pick ourselves up and we put ourselves back together and we create a partnership again i'm looking forward to working with my partners in the house and the senate to say we saw democracy in action and we're older and wiser and we just go back to work it's a straight forward is that folks because we work for you and you go through these things and it was interesting i told my team a lesson actually i shared with them back in two thousand and ten before i became governor has one of the problems you find in the public sector is people avoid risk their fraid to do something that might not work because they're afraid someone is going to say well if you fail your failure and you have no place to go your future's over well i told them that's ridiculous i actually told them in fact that if everything we work on and works that meant we weren't doing our job because we were broken state and part of is having the courage to take on issues and recognize everything doesn't come simple everything just doesn't happen but if you have the courage and conviction to believe in important things to do the right thing it will happen you just have to be real want most and pursue it in a positive way so that's where our p a came from so i view this although i'm in a pot also several feet deep we're just digging our way out we're going to get back up dust ourselves off and get back to work to serve you the people the state of michigan now let me talk about michigan i'd like to share a few thoughts with you and then really related to this area michigan is the comeback state many ways so obviously we've got powells and transportation to deal with but if you look at where we're out we're broken state we're fifty out of fifty in so many different ways the only state that lost population in the last decade how we've done over the last four years we've created nearly four hundred thousand private sector jobs as number five in the nation after being number fifty our unemployment rate i was proud to announce just three weeks ago or sell it was eleven two point two percent back in december of two thousand and ten it hit five point six percent drop by half in a little over four years by far and i'll stand performance compared to the rest of the country to put it in perspective though we have great upside opportunity we're not done we actually have a website that tracks open jobs in our state back in two thousand eleven it said we had eighty thousand open jobs in michigan today if you go to my town dot org you'll see we have ninety three thousand listed today so even with that drop and i don't plan and we have more openings more opportunity for people and that's where you come in you're helping lead the charge this community this part of michigan and you should be proud of that we have three counties that have unemployment below four percent in our state two of them are out of one count you've been working hard so when i say we created nearly four hundred thousand private sector jobs none of us in the public sector created those jobs we are doing our job of creating the environment for success it's those of you in the private sector they have been creating those jobs and i say thank you to you for your hard work that a second company company for two years in a row now e p w electronics fabulous success story doing l e d lighting electronics wonderful things i was there last year they had one hundred fifty people i was there today they had two hundred people think about that having fifty people in one near the back of the building had been blown out of an extended they had great contractors they had expanded their building that's the kind of success are see and that's what we should be proud of but for all those good things and there's a long list actually i know you can't see this but we actually keep a list this is what we've gotten done in the last four years in this state it's a list we should all be proud of to be bl it's not good enough we can do better so why it's great to celebrate some success we should recognize there's important work to be done still in addition to transportation and why do i say that if you look at it we still have people in need we have people still looking for opportunities we have people that are underemployed they could have better positions if they were available we have people that have been challenge for years in terms of being in the workforce and we can find ways to help them and then we've got a lot of fabulous young people we want to keep them right here in fact the nice part is we're starting to see a lot of those young people and even older people coming back home to michigan remember that ma is there returning but let's not stop was a build on that now as you find issues such as getting unemployment below four percent you find new challenges and new things we have to focus on i thought i would share a few of those with you to say we are focused in on not just today but the next thirty forty fifty years of michigan because this isn't just about us it's what are we doing for our kids and our kids kids and their kids so they can be in this audience they can be in those wooden shoes well one of the things we've really focused in on the education area looking at the forty and fifty year rise in the longer term horizon is pre treat preschool through third grade we can do much better interstate why is third grade so important third grade reading is one of the great metrics of success in someone's life believe it or not just think about that we don't think about that very often but to say here you already have to work hard in life and you're in trouble if you're not succeeding by third grade well third grade reading wasn't mean the first few years your life you're learning to read after about third grader sh it starts becoming the point you're reading to learn so if you're not prepared by third grade you're not a great position to learn all the things you're going to need to be successful in life so we need to make a focused effort on that and we're going to i think it's critically important and that's one of those long term investments you're not going to see the benefits of that for lots of years but should we make it and make it well and make it smart now another huge area that i think is really deserves a lot more emphasis is in our education system also and i draw a circle around it i draw a circle around high school and higher education because there's a lot of work to be done there to really create the opportunity for success we have some wonderful things going on we have wonderful teachers we have wonderful programs in many ways but again it's not good enough and let me try to put in perspective for you if you think about it and we're doing so well in this area if you talk to most any business person they'll tell you their biggest question now is hiring people with the right skills and the right talent any business people out there would be ready to hire someone right away if they had the right skills raise your hand i bet that's probably eighty percent plus of the business people in this audience raise their hand we can do a much better job of making that connection happen there are two or three pieces to it first of all we broke our system some years ago for career tech education in the skilled trades and we did something smart quite a few years ago which was to recognize we're in a global economy and we're going to need more education than simply high school that was a smart conclusion directly nies we're in a global economy we're competing with the rest of the world we need better smarter people in terms of resources and we need to provide that but where we must stop is is we starting on this track of telling everyone they should go get a university degree and i've got one i'm never going to discourage anyone from getting a university degree but we what we did when we did that is we sort of broke an equally honorable equally important career track called career tech education now some of you are my age profile we used to call it vall add folks for those of you not up on career tech ad but it's really training people to have the right skill sets to be successful in the workplace right away and those positions are there and when we talk about skilled trades which let's redefine the skilled trades it's not just walter plumber electrician those are awesome careers if you're in any one of those not just in this area any corner michigan you can get a job in a day or two absolutely but a skilled trade now applies to most positions out in the workforce if you're in manufacturing today if you're an electronics you're a skilled trades person you're running a surface mount technology equipment a couple million dollar piece of equipment if you're in agriculture today you're a skilled trades person you don't run a quarter million dollar tractor a half million dollar combine that drives by g p s by just happen in get behind the wheel that's a skilled trade and we need to build that pipeline back we need to reestablish the skilled trades in a broad sense and career tech education as an honorable exciting career opportunity and there they are auto technicians w make eighty thousand dollars a year truck drivers can make sixty to eighty thousand a year on electrician can make sixty to eighty thousand dollars a year when people talk about the need to deal with income issues in our country this is the smartest solution you don't take something away from someone else what you do is you build an opportunity for someone to have a great middle class life and job and career that's what we need to be working on how do you do that one of the things is we need to get parents and kids more engaged a lot of us have all broken ideas about the skilled trades were the ones sort of pushing our kids off to university we're skipping over those great well paying jobs the interesting part is if you do the math you can find an electrician's pay is the same as an attorney in the state of michigan one got their education paid for through an apprenticeship the other went to seven years of school we need to be smarter about things one of the things we created several years ago that we don't emphasize enough because it's still growing and coming together the way i want but we put a career investment calculator on dot org you got to go back a few pages but you can actually look at different careers it'll tell you the lifetime of an estimate of education cost and tell you the return on investment for a particular career is not kind of cool it's something we should be using more again you should never take a job or pick a career simply because of money but should that be something you consider ultimately what i'd like to see is have us have the ability to let people know if you go on this field you've got business people out there we need to open up your businesses and do more tours be more proactive internships apprenticeships job shadowing all these things need to happen to help our parents and kids the other part is actually when you get to these institutions when you get to high school and college and i know we have some great educators out there so please don't take offense to this but i'm going to ask a question that i've asked people before and see how you react remember back when you were going through high school in college and you were going through that process of deciding what you're going to study and then what you're going to do remember how great that counseling was in high school and college you get the normal reaction i get a lot of smiles and laughs because for most of us it was our parents or some role model we found in typically the easy ones where if you're a doctor you're going to a doctor a lawyer policeman fireman all those traditional things we typically don't get a lot of help and again if there's some career counselors out there i appreciate your work but we need to give you better tools and we need more of you well give people better advice think about that in the life time decisions you make how many decisions would rank up there with deciding what educational program you're going to select or what career going to slacked and then think of decisions of that magnitude how little information do you have to really make an informed decision again the likelihood of finding a job have an opportunity to visit that job shadow in that area all these things are good things we can do to make a difference in people's lives that's how we can do wonderful things the other part that needs to go with it is we need the private sector to step up more i want to challenge the private sector because you're excited you really want to hire these people but we have barriers that you're actually creating yourself let me give you the easiest illustration quite often when i talk to employers out there looking to hire people and if i want to around this room i can find probably a dozen or so that say you know we don't want to hire just one person for a particular job we want to hire five people or we want to hire ten people and then i ask how many postings do you have out for that job one that put up one post in the say we have one opening if you do that and you have five openings you're part of the problem because how do we know what your need is if you don't come tell us you need five or ten people how can we go to a career tech center how can we set up a program to say we need this many seats to train this many people you've just sandbagged us you problem you need stuff up and the funny one is i actually did this at the auto show detroit auto show couple years ago i had a group of auto dealers so i actually did the same exercise i said how many of you just have one post in dollars a year so if you step back and look at this this is a huge opportunity and it involves parents and kids it involves the very beginning of this process it involves us working more collaborative ly together with our school districts or intermediate school districts or community colleges or universities all the people there are educators bringing them together it involves the private sector coming to the table and our role isn't to spend tons of money but be that clearinghouse in court nater place to bring you together and make that place of good honest dialogue the power of this is we can change michigan we can change our country and we can change the world by doing this better than anyone else to be blunt i don't believe anyone in our country is doing this particularly well when you have a comeback economy and you want to have that attitude of being the best state in the best and maintaining that for decades you don't do it by resting on your laurels you do it by having fire and passion to say hey great let's celebrate for an hour or two now us roth our sleeves and get to work again these are the steps we need to take now the other part is we can do this in a way to help people that haven't had opportunity they haven't been successful in the past i'll give you one of our program we built called community ventures several years ago and we did it was solely state dollars to be bought in washington is all messed up i knew they couldn't cope with this so we did it ourselves so over the last three years we said let's go find structurally i don't void people let's find companies partners that want to cooperate and we've got over one hundred companies now participating and let's help those folks that haven't been able to hold a job hold a job how have we done we placed nearly three thousand people our retention rate is nearly seventy percent after one year and if you wonder is that good seventy percent is awesome in a program like that average pay eleven a half dollars an hour well above minimum wage they're now on the path to success what we are doing is that we're taking traditional programs the federal stuff and put it on top because to be blunt i want to give an upward mobility so they can go off to be an engineer s at some company if they have the capabilities aptitude and are ready to go but now they've learned how to hold a job be successful a job and take off that's good so we're doing programs like that because again when you look at our own government how do we play we need to restructure that we need to get out of the mode of being a place that too often may help someone stay with a dependency on government we need to relook at how we do things  ourselves and i talked about this in the state of the state this is about moving and not stop treating people like a series of cases that are in this program that program that program that's the way we're structured in our federal level that's not how you show someone the dignity of saying they need help and actually helping them we need to move from programs to people again we need to move from dealing with symptoms of programs to doing what's the root cause and helping address the root cause issues we need to move from continuing to have programs where we keep track of how many people are dependent on us how many people have we help become self sufficient or minimize their dependency on us and we need to move from programs that are about government doing everything that's not a good answer to a thing about saying it's the community gathering together to help those in need and we're doing it and we're going to keep doing it and so what i try to give us a snapshot of saying be proud of your success here again to the country comedies with the last unemployment rate here six the ten but the last unemployment the state are in this part of the state but don't be content don't be complacent that's how we ended up fifty have this passion and fire to say if we're four percent how do we do better how do we build that pipeline of helping young people of people looking for that next career be successful with the skilled trades career tech education all those skills and then how do we reach out to the people that haven't been participating in our comeback and give an opportunity to participate that's something we can do that's something we can be the best at that's something we should be proud of and i'm proud to be your governor and i hope you're fired up to join me in doing this i'm sorry i'm not going to join in the parade i'm looking forward to watching those brooms and shoes go back and forth thank you so much governor we have a copy of the print too to give to you and present to you that we hope you'll take back to lansing and wherever else and enjoy so thank you but we also on behalf of with with on the can bank manager john together the  michigan for blue cross blue shield blue care network of michigan there it is has a wonderful announcement you're going to want to hear about  i don't know about the announcement but for some reason i always the last that these functions follow the governor the mayor it's pretty difficult and i think i stand between you all and the parade as as well  if i want to mention first yogurt that you're going to be able to grab on the way out of here somewhere before you go to the parade but just not only am i going last i'm talking and representing health care so please just stay in your seats for a minute obviously some redundancy here to take in the governor for being here i will confess this is no booze but this is my first time luncheon and i will say for somebody who has i can tell you for someone their first time it's incredible when i walked in the door here before noon i guess it was in see this arena and the tables and then all the dignitaries and the star studded event it is very impressive so i think you all owe yourself a run of applause for sure of i like about governor schneider is the relentless positive action is pretty good and also nothing comes easy for those of you who work in health care health care policy you certainly know that nothing comes easy at all but i'm behalf of blue cross and blue shield and blue car network we have over seven thousand employees throughout the state in every county eighty three counties and they live and work in all these counties and we're honored and i'm humbled actually to even be a part of this and to be sponsoring to look festival again in a luncheon a blue cross also has a tradition providing affordable in a sustainable cost and we continue to do that to this day i will say one of the thing in closing that more of our focus most recently in the last three to five years has been  engaging if you will all ages from from from birth to to seniors and everywhere in between to focus on actually engage in our members to actually use health care services to use preventative services that have been brought about a lot by the ac a affordable care act but these things will just help you in the long run to try to avoid health care crisis in the future when you get older the other thing we're doing as well is engaging in grade school levels to make better choices to educate them on a lot of things being active being healthy walking in plain sports  also around and making good choices in sort of creating a good habit from a young age i know this is hard to say because i love eating just about everything but the choices you make and what you eat are very instrumental in how your life is going to be later on cell with the obesity crisis that we have across the country certainly in michigan we really focus on that so we're proud of that and again thank you for being here honored to be here and i appreciate you all coming and have a great day and don't forget the yogurt in the back please thank you well friends that's about it governor again we want to sincerely thank you for coming again this year like you've done every year it makes the luncheon so much better to have you here so thank you for being here as well as for your words for us if you'll permit me forty five seconds to just express deep appreciation to this community for a remarkable opportunity to be among you to call this place home i look up throughout the crowd here and i see so many people who fourteen years ago i did not know today i know you as friends and acquaintances and i look at you as potential new donors to trinity college now this really is a remarkable town when we moved here thirteen years ago to holland to michigan we didn't know what to expect we hope we were making a good choice and we came here and this was a place that we found to be so incredibly warm so incredibly inviting you gave me the opportunity to serve on the council and as mayor with only a short time in town before you and trusted me with with that responsibility and gave me your your trust to do so i want you to know i appreciate it and it's a remarkable place it's a community that if you come into it with your arms ready to dig in and work you'll find arms r embrace and that is the holland that we know that's the holland we love and candidly that's the holland that we're going to miss going forward but all right enough of that good things are happening the sun is almost shining released it's not raining the gun like a scene of oaks parade is about ray to kick off thank you all for coming very coming this year thank you very much for the eighty fifth eighty sixth annual till of time please enjoy the rest of the festival and have a great day thank you