going to get started and i just want you to know and i know you're here because you feel the same way i do i love this region this is such a great community for us to live in we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country we have eighteen fortune five hundred companies headquartered here and it's a wonderful climate for business and we're productive and we have so much opportunity for so many of us we work at jobs that pay us fairly for what we do and there are jobs that really make it possible for us to afford childcare while we're working and we might not consider ourselves to be wealthy but we know that we have enough money to make choices in our lives we have enough to eat and we can always find healthy food at prices that are really within our budget and some of us i hope lots of us travel to work on buses and trains but many more of a striver own cars and then we can hop on bikes and beautiful bike trails and we can walk on the hike in the parks in the open spaces in the region it is a beautiful place to live and we live in comfortable homes and we feel safe when we walk on the sidewalks and on the streets in our neighborhoods and we have great amount of these for theatre and music and art and sports and we can splurge for a ticket every now and then for something that we're really passionate about and you know what else we're involved in our children's schools and we imagine a future future for them where they're going to go to college and they're going to get an opportunity to go to work and we know that we can help them to succeed so our children have abundant choices and they're choices like we had about where we're going to live where we're going to work and we know that each one of them is going to have a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential you know what that's what opportunity looks like it's not that complicated it's actually pretty simple if you think about it and i know you agree with me that this vision of opportunity is is a vision of a truly prosperous region and that this is not a vision just for a few families in some communities but it should be for all families in all neighborhoods and in all communities for all of us and the challenge that we face today our some neighborhoods in our region and some communities this really isn't what they experience this isn't the opportunity we would like to see for our entire region you know we've made progress on race relations and equal opportunity but quite frankly it's not enough in fact our nation has some of the most shocking race based disparities in the country our region has race based disparities that are worse than atlanta chicago dallas seattle washington d c i don't know about you but quite frankly when i love this region as much as i do i am pretty embarrassed that our region is at the top of the list i don't want to see is that the top of and that is we are the top of the list of the twenty five largest u s metropolitan areas with the worst race space income disparities in the country and if we want the vision in the future for opportunity that i just described we have to change and we really want that opportunity for all people so my question to all of you is are you ready for that challenge and are you ready to change are we ready  to ensure that each new baby born in each high school graduate in each new job seeker has a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential in order to change we really have to know what we're up against so today we have for you a summary of the consuls for housing an equity assessment and it really gives us a glimpse of where we are today and what the work ahead of us needs to be today in our region only six percent of white people live in poverty you know that is probably one of the very lowest poverty rates for white people in the country but if you're a person of color it's a totally different story twenty five percent of people of color live in poverty and that is one of the very worst rates for a metropolitan area in our country and research tells us that people who live in poverty have a lower high school graduation rates their last likely to own their own home they're more likely to suffer from chronic illness and they're more likely to be a victim of a crime while poverty by itself really isn't the only problem as you can imagine people who live in neighborhoods where most of their neighbors are also pour encounter more barriers to success than people who live in higher income neighborhoods and growing up in concentrated poverty makes children less likely to succeed than their parents and this is a pattern that harms families chances to succeed in to the middle class generation after generation in a subset of these impoverished neighborhoods are also predominately home to people of color people who not only face the challenges of concentrated poverty but face the challenge of race discrimination and these poor and segregated neighborhoods are what we are terming racially concentrated areas of poverty or are kept the fact that the poorest in the most segregated nation neighborhoods in our region have grown substantially since one nine hundred ninety and i think if you look up here at this map you can see the racially concentrated areas of poverty and it's not a story that we want to see for the next ten years and the next twenty years in the next thirty years after that and twenty ten nine percent live of our population so that's more than a quarter of a million people in our region live in one of these racially concentrated areas of poverty just think about that that is just about one in tan twin city residents live in a neighborhood where the odds may be stacked against them i'm confident that if we agree as a region that this disparity is just acceptable and it is a barrier to our growth as a region that we will be able to work together to invest in equity opportunity can be within reach for everyone think of the possibility for our region to grow to prosper if we could eliminate this race based income disparity but if we could move three hundred thousand people out of poverty what would that look like imagine a region where people of color have the same high school graduation rates as a white population same employment rates the same homeownership rates and what would that look like well you know what to look like we have one hundred eighty two thousand more high school graduates would that be great  we'd have one hundred thirty seven thousand more people employed in the workforce and we'd have two hundred sixteen thousand mark homeowners this economic progress would result in the investment of thirty five billion dollars into our economy this would be money that would be spent and housing and child care and education and consumer goods and this is how growth happens when so many people don't have the opportunity to grow and succeed we're going to get stuck in the work in our region so let me say that one more time eliminating racial disparities could inject thirty five billion dollars into our regional economy everything for forty six years the council was lauded for thinking regionally in order to help our region prosper so on twenty fourteen we're opening a new chapter think we're moving to an era we're going to to both think regionally but we're going to act with a bully at the met council are council members and many of our staff had the opportunity to participate in cultural competency training this past year and i found it just to be a fascinating and i opening experience for me personally and i know others felt the same and one of the things we are wrestling with in that training was trying to define what is the difference between equality and equity what's that really mean and how do we act on that one of my dear favorite definitions came from ad who manages our website who is involved with the training and he says this equality is like a group of people who are dropped in the middle of the lake in identical swim suits and they're asked to swim to shore so it's equal right well activity on the other hand it's like a group of people who are dropped in the middle of the lake and they have what they need to get to shore maybe some of them need flippers and a goggles maybe some of them need an inner to maybe some of them need a jet ski i don't know but equity is different than any quality because the reality of our world as things are equal to begin with so translated to public policy equity really requires us to have a tailored approach to each community in our region and  particularly in areas that have historic disinvestment when i talk to mayors and county commissioners and city council members from around the region i know each one of them care very much about the unique character of their own neighborhood in their own community and they know it well so this idea that there are different things needed in different communities should be something that is really easy for us to understand you know in our area  our region disparities like educational attainment and employment are both social and they're spatial and that means that they may show up predominately in some geographies and that race and place and wellbeing are really tied together so let me say that again you know your race impacts where you live and where you live impacts your health your education and your economic outcomes and we really can't address one without the other looks so what role can the council play here so next month descending a regional plan thrive m s p twenty forty is going to go out for public comment we've been working on it for a long time well over a year hundreds of hours of meetings and listening to people and probably thousands of people have had the opportunity to provide input to us on this and this new so let's talk about community engagement first public engagement model is really something that has to change and i think we've been working on it making progress and i think we're getting there but we have a ways to go we want to work with communities to develop solutions we know that government and policymakers decide how resources get distributed and through our investment decisions those really have impacts on people's lives so we want to make sure that people who are impacted by our decisions are telling us what they need what they want and what they want to see in their community so we've begun to change our practices we are listening earlier we're trying to listen to people in new and different ways and gauge people who have historically not been at the table and who haven't participated with us so they can have greater impact at the very beginning of our work so our whole approach to community engagement is to make decisions with people and not just for people in this is the bast way to make our work applicable when people are at the table with us sacca and we want to really work with our partners to create choices in housing throughout the region and this is across age and race and ethnicity and economic means and ability we need to get better results in housing and to do that we can't do that just on our own at the council but we can partner with community organizations and local governments to serve racially concentrated areas of poverty spur the right kind of development in our very poorest neighborhoods with the help of council resources this development will bring about more opportunity for jobs and more opportunity to stabilize housing in areas that have declining values but better more balanced neighborhoods won't just happen from development and redevelopment and increasing the council really needs to understand it connection with non profits and with schools because we know that lifting people out of poverty is a both and proposition it's affordable housing and a good job it's job training and want to work to expand connections to employment to act above transept service and facilities so let's talk about transportation we want to make investments in the transportation system that's going to provide both the short term benefits of construction those construction jobs are tremendous for this region but the longer term benefits of access to both schools and work so we have something to celebrate coming up pretty and i hope everyone here knows what it is june fourteenth we're going to open the green line ye thanks i hope you're all going to be there i can hardly wait it's going to be a great weekend for us but let's talk about the green line and what we know about what's happened this past year since we started construction in tw eleven this is the largest public works project in the history of the state of minnesota five thousand four hundred people have been working to build and design this project it's really a remarkable story for our state and in addition to the public money spent on this project what we know today and the line hasn't even opened yet there's been over one point seven billion dollars in private investment along the line and i'm not counting the jobs that are engaged with the development of those projects that's another whole story but what's exciting to me as a public partner is that when we built this project eighteen percent of the people who work to build and design the project were people of color and and and it's not enough and we need to do more but ten percent of all of dollars spent to design and build this project went to women and minority owned businesses and i think backs the part success of public employer with that we can bring to this community well in twenty thirteen and twenty thirteen last year governor dayton proposed an increase of a half cent in our sales tax to be dedicated for so we can expand regular out bus service so we can expand express bus service so we can build the t v so we can build t v and this is what our region could look like if we can get that thing passed and we're making progress we've got a past in the senate last year and we know transportation is going to be a big topic this legislative session and if people like you really care about it i hope you'll talk with your legislators about it and let them know that it's you think it's important for the future of our region in december i joined commissioner charlie sally or mend a commissioner at a series of town hall forms in the region about five of them and this is following on worked charley was doing all over the state i think charlie went to thirty different communities to talk about what do we need for our state in our region to and vast and trance and transportation and what we heard in all of the places i was at was that people want more and they are want now and i think that's good knows that people really care about this i want to call back a particular participant who was there who said you know what i work downtown my boss for my bus route the last bus out is at six i can't take on late hours and i can't take on special projects because that's my only choice to get home and so for that individual to have expanded frequency later boss times really is about personal ability to succeed personal economic opportunity and that story could be played out over and over and over again in this region because it is how people get to work so transit expansion is certainly linked to personal economic success and trance it is also part of stimulating development in the region and we're going to be extinct expanding into a really a new mode this year and for people who don't know about bus rapid transit or b r t it's going to be fun you're going to like it when you find out more about it so really what is it well it's frequent all they service like a light rail line the boarding is faster on and off like on a light rail train it's more comfortable station amenities and basically the trip is just faster what we know is that on b r t the line that we're going to propose right out this door it's twenty five to thirty percent faster than regular robust service now that makes a lot of difference to someone in their daily life and the choices are making well in june we were really pleased to open with our partners minnesota valley trance of authority and dakota county the breadline yet a for all the people who worked on that and that  bloomington and i think there's a picture oh yeah there it is ok so you can see while that is no ordinary bus stop that b r t line and that's a type of amenity we can have on p r t that attracts riders that makes it faster to get on and off the busses that would be an investment in our community in the future so let me talk about the a line right outside of this store's snelling avenue snelling avenue is a really high frequency bus route today carries a lot of rice writers on a daily basis i think it's around four thousand writers so we're proposing a line b r t service on this snelling avenue and let me tell you what it would connect it's pretty darn exciting snelling avenue is a busy commercial corridor and it has a lots of popular destinations of course mcallister college hamlin university highland village shopping area rosedale shopping area many haha falls park the midway shopping area and it connects to both the green line going from downtown st paul to minneapolis and the blue line going from now the red line all the way from apple valley through to downtown so the governor requested ten million dollars in the bonding his bonding proposal this year so we could begin construction on this b r t line on this next year and i think it would be really exciting i have to say to all my friends in ramsey county who really would like to see this line extended out to the t cap site in arden hills that's that's something that we could think about in the future as well so we have a dotted line on that map for that reason so we know that expect the best possible most equitable trance an expansion means high frequency quality service and we have to have the right model in the right quarter at the right time and we can do that if we have this expanded and vast meant intransitive in our region and we know that will spur development and we know that will be good for the region as a whole you know what this vision of opportunity really isn't easy this vision of equity isn't easy and it won't be easy if we don't do things if we don't act sometimes it's difficult because communities might perceive if one community gets a bigger slice of the pie that they're going to get left out and that's really a barrier to acting equitably so let's think about that differently what we know is that if equity is done right and we're investing and disadvantaged communities what we're going to do is we're going to grow the whole pie and everyone will be able to get a bigger slice of the pie and that's how we have to start thinking about acting equitably so i'm going to challenge each of us to think about it what would we do if you are he work with the city you work with a county you work with a nonprofit or schools or a business or the community you know how are you going to act on this what do you what are you going to do and i think it starts with asking the right questions why is equity important to our region fold it's really about ensuring that children who are in grade school today who live in poverty have a chance to achieve their dreams and to be everything that they can in it's also about the future prosperity of our region as a whole i look at these third graders here in this picture and i just see and ask the questions you know what's going to happen are they going to graduate from high school are they going to go to college will they be able to get a job will they be able to buy a home can they earn enough to support their family will they become a business owner or are they going to be the mayor of their city what what is their future look like so i think promises and choices about and for us and for them if we can think regionally and we can act accordingly so i hope you'll join us at the council let's roll up our sleeves and let's get to work thank you  the they've each are each really remarkable leaders in our community and are working on this whole issue of equity because they're acting on it they're working on it and that's what i love about having them on our panel revolutionary change in north minneapolis she's really focusing on multigenerational poverty an ending that by birth to graduation approach to education she's working in collaboration with thirty five different non profits and schools and their single goal is to prepare twenty five hundred low income north minneapolis children to graduate from high school and be ready for college and there supporting parents she's a national leader she's worked on this issue a lot and i know she'll have a lot to say and then i'm also excited to in introduce europe isn't my immediate right he is a president and c e o of nexus community partners and that is a community building organization that serves as an intermediary it helps to build command capacity within community based organizations and they are engaging communities of color to achieve actable and sustainable development in the twin cities region has more than twenty five years of experience in community based leadership and wealth building strategies he's been a member of our policy board of the quarters of opportunity which is now migrating to be called the partnership for regional opportunity and he is co chairing along with commissioner jim mcdonough one of our working groups called regional equity and community engagement so we're welcome repass and then bill mckinney on the and is the vice president of talent and long term development for thrive and financial he's been at thriving for eleven years he's led a variety of business groups that thrive that strategy and research development and most recently talent and change management  the organization and what he is really working on is effectively leveraging thrive and civility to keep changing and responding to the community as it grows its business his boss brad hewitt the c michael hang the c e o and president while their foundation are leading a work group with the itasca project called the social economic disparities project and bill is deeply involved in that  bill let me start with you equity as a growth from your perspective you know why is that important for the long term viability of our region the speak from the from but the task of project group it doesn't have lots of staff it doesn't have a big budget it's essentially a voluntary association of leaders trying to make a difference and the three issues that they really have focused on over the last ten years are education transportation and jobs and at the intersection of those three they've realized like all the rest of us like the rest of you have that disparities play a really big role in our ability to succeed as a region and so the about eight years ago they took a run at this this issue of despair so how can we make a difference and came out with a blueprint came out with a plan and two thousand and eight came along and the situation actually didn't get better the situation has gotten worse which is sort of you listen to the numbers and you think how could that possibly be but it's true and so they've taken and we've taken another run at it and what's come out of it is really two things the we're focused on one is to get large employers committed to actually moving the ball and there are some that have done a great job and there are others like us who are really just getting started it help a new address the problem and then the second one is how do you raise the issue in the awar group of people about the challenge and i think our ryback has been part of our group along the way and really said it best which is this really isn't about it's about addressing a problem but it's more about capturing an opportunity because as a as a region we're gonna look a lot different than we did and if we don't figure out how to capture this opportunity it's exactly the same problem that companies face if they don't respond to the changing face of the marketplace so that's how we think about it thank you how about you senator why why do you think it's important for economic competitiveness yeah i want to start with a thank you by the way susan i just love that the mic council is thinking regionally and acting equitably because major you i'm a quote girl so i want to start with a quote mandela who still lives through his words and actions said like slavery and apartheid poverty is not natural it is man made and it can be overcome and eradicate it by actions of human beings and so as we think of north minneapolis the area that i live and represent and and raising three girls and a husband a dog again not raising the husband but here i tried to but you know we've seen it is really the vortex of most disparities i mean where the heart of it is really happening in terms of the storm of our region and and  working with a number of organizations in fact thirty seven there's a couple of partners here in the room if you can wave your hands if you're here thank you and we are saying that we have to address these issues because they're under performing assets in north minneapolis both in homeowners homes the value of homes you know we are we've been living there for like seventeen years and we are way underwater most of my neighbors are whether they're middle class or low income as long as they're homeowners they are it's a tax that we pay for living there and because we play really little in taxes other areas of the city have to pay more and if if if it were more equitable in our home prices were up more and we weren't underwater then we would all be sharing the weight equitably but the main thing is that you know we north minneapolis are really modeling ourselves after harlem children zone in new york and in fact a call how many of you are familiar with geoffrey canada harlem children zone in fact lashed year we brought jeff here jeff canada because he has done extensive writing around how their region and new york really took on these disparities and have transformed central harlem at least he sh s footage of what buildings look like so it really got into bricks and mortar a twenty years ago before they started really addressing the disparities the heart of that being education education education and we actually got a number of c e o s i think somewhere in the room today and asked them to come with jeff last year to talk about how addressing disparities there have made a difference and so central harlem of any of you have been there recently is not the same place it was twenty years there in fact one of the challenges that i think we'll have to address because we will be successful in this regional development is that many of the low income residents that were part of harlem children zone no longer can afford to live in harlem the market prices have gone up so significantly there's even a banana republic and home in the central harlem and i don't necessarily we don't necessarily need a banana republic in north minneapolis but we  some strong businesses but again education education education i want to talk more about that how how we are trying to do what we are doing what then senator obama said about eight years ago that if if poverty is a disease that infects an entire community and i would argue a region in the form of low housing prices and availability poor transportation disproportionate violence poverty and failing schools and this report their violence that you can't feel it in isolation you actually have to heal the whole thing by lifting up what works and that's how i think we really will address this issue and do it successfully and it's been done in other we're in right now is not a philosophy it's not a perspective it's not a political point of view it's a reality many way many many ways no pun intended that train has left t today in space is a completely different environment and by and but twenty forty when you're turning to retirement the last and fifty percent of the population will be  that means we're moving to a country a nation that's majority of color and in twenty four to forty two percent of our region will be people of color so there's not ifs and or maybe you could see or been that's the real deal right so when we're looking into the future in terms of economic competitiveness and we'll look at our greatest challenges as well as our greatest opportunities it is that diversity that exist in this region that will be the best see that nurtures the possibilities that exist and it is that that kind of innovation adaptability and connectivity locally nationally and internationally erratic is going to be critical in the future and it's going to take the rich diversity to move us to what would be the next era of economic prosperity either we invest so what types and investment should we be thinking about what how do we do this to scale not just in north minneapolis spit in the other our caps in the region and  do we connect people to opportunities where do you see as promising yeah and susie can i just pay you back on just a little bit so our play space strategy our mission is to create a culture of achievement in a geographic zone of north minneapolis where all children graduate high school college ready and we're using education as a lever our goal is to engage in multigenerational poverty as we know it again using education and the reason it's so important for the region in terms of some of the graduation rates were done across the country where they use the same measure and what they found was minnesota came in second to last in graduating african american students of four years came in dead last of all the states only nevada beat us with  african american students i want to find out what's happened here and then dead last with latino in american indian students of all then tire country and then when we look at who our youngest citizens are here in ramsey county  fifty percent of the children zero to five today are children of color in line with what republish talking about and hennepin county we're getting very close to fifty percent and so when you look and minneapolis african american children scholars we call them are only graduating at a thirty seven percent graduation rate you don't build an economy on the and in fact what we keep talking about is one of the reasons i think susan you mentioned that we have eighteen corporations here today fortune five hundred  well they're not here because of our beachfront property right there here because we've had an educated workforce so if we just do the math and we are running into a tragic tragic collision with what's happening today unless we address education and so within the zone what we're doing is we have family in goshen at the center where parents are leaders and we have five hundred fifty six families who are engaged in the north side achievement zone and again this culture of achievement working with over thirty seven partners nonprofits city officials you know hennepin county and so on and so forth and we have erected the education pipeline as well as a whole family support pipeline you need both and still the education pipeline we're working with partners from early childhood from the womb to work early childhood our k through twelve partners expanded learning mentoring and then in college of course all getting together looking for outcomes and strategies for the same families and the same scholars and then the whole family support is so that ace's are removed from children's lives adverse childhood experiences and so we are working with career financial pathway organizations to make sure these families who have been stuck in generational poverty i'm again very manmade so that they can break out of that and look for not just a job but also a career and then they're working with housing organizations you know a huge huge issue in our neighborhood i don't know if anybody saw the article that was written and yesterday's paper about how north minneapolis has been disproportionately hit by the foreclosures nobody feels it more than than our families and the house they highlight yesterday on hillside avenue is one that is about five blocks five houses up from don and i and it was one that was seven years ago worth fifty thousand it went up to sixty five then at the height of the foreclosure closure crisis it went to two hundred ninety thousand dollars and just recently sold for forty six thousand and a two one investor and i think them bester says some really prophetic because we always complain about the slumlords and many of mu as the jury is out for this one but i could kind of tell you but anyway that we complain that investors are taking over and what he said i think pretty appropriately is it's not just that investors are taking over is that people are only willing to move to north minneapolis and live in a place and be part of the transformation and that's what the zone is doing working with again five hundred fifty six families changing everything about their lives all at once parenting education and all of the services that we're doing wrap around and all of our partners are using the same web based tool so that we're communicating about the same families and the same scholars and they're on the trajectory and they're on a plan so we have a two generation approach susan and i think and i think what we're doing  minneapolis and north minneapolis can be scaled up anywhere is happening here in st paul as well with the same all promise neighborhood is happening in sixty one communities around the country and we're just really the thing that scalable are the best practices and that's where the real key comes from that we just don't do what we've always done and think something's going to be different but that we lift up what's working in education and there are things that are working in education around the country from early childhood to  college in housing and career and partnering with the families not saving the families not ask acting like a social worker on steroids but saying i am your partner as you look to change the trajectory for your families and i tell you you know i stop here are five hundred fifty six families are all on a continuum of helping this and dysfunction like all of us in this room many of them have been trapped in generational poverty but what i keep say that i have such hope because these families are showing up and they're showing out and i mean in a good way because we're not forcing them to go to the parenting education program we're not forcing them to to s college bound commitment as soon as they sign up but they're doing it and they're hungry they're hungry for this region for the city to to really address the disparities that are happening right in our midst that we created and that we can shape it's great to hear the optimism and the investment strategy tell me a little bit about what do you think from a business perspective sander was talking about some of the fast practices decide task a project thinking some of the business best practices here one of the things we did as part of the project was went around and talked to some companies and there are some companies in town that are doing much better than others on this and what we found there were really four keys to the puzzle and the four keys were number one was to have a business case and you know as a business it's easy to get somebody's attention with a business case it's a lot harder to get somebody's attention with a moral case because you're not paying me for the moral case you're paying me to do my job and to deliver results so what's the business case the second one is you've got to have sea level leadership which means the c e o has got to really want it to happen the third is you have to build cultural competency inside the organization so that when when you actually make some progress  people succeed and the fourth is you've got to have the tactical initiative you know what's your strategy for actually reaching out and finding people that look different than you have and so at the task group the challenge is it's pretty straightforward to think about doing that the the great thing it thrive in and some of you have heard me say this before are our company is a is an incredibly diverse organization representing all flavors of lutheran all of them covered and this is  true fact we are ninety eight point two percent white and so we have perfectly reflect the market that we serve we do not accurately reflect the market of people who go to church every sunday which is the the folks we want to serve and so as we think about what we need to do the good news when you come thirty years to late to the party is it's a pretty straightforward path you've got to run down to do better and the challenge is how do you do it in a region and i think you know the business case to me is exactly what if we don't we got real problems we have to solve the thirty five billion dollar question or as a region we're really in trouble i think we do have some sea level leadership from from folks like the  both mayors address this is part of their kick off this year i don't know how we build cultural competency in this region and i think that is a really big challenge i think schools have a role to play i think churches have a role to play i think businesses have a role to play but i think if we don't really start to work on that one the tactical initiatives are going to work and you know i think that would continue to be a big challenge and i'm not sure exactly what the path forward is but that seems to me to be a missing piece that we have to tackle and it's not easy i mean i think anybody who's done any of those the or any of the cultural assessments knows that almost one hundred percent of the people think they're more culturally competent than they are and that would have been true for us including i mean you know people have been thinking i'm working on this so so i think that that to me is the challenge and you know as a company what we're we need to do work is we need to reach out and connect to community because when we put we go looking for people we get people that look like us we don't get people that don't look like us so we have to get through the tactical initiatives but before we do that we're working really hard right now  competent so fred thank you so much and that and reply you know how about what are some of the best practices that you think about about how do we engage communities in decisions about how we invest in not only in their neighborhoods that in the region overall and how do we do that better so let me make a comment just following up on her mother some of the things that i think inspire me and i think critical to any opportunity and now the partnership for reaching this idea of looking at the region as a whole across to its actions across areas of focus i think is a critical part of how we move forward the other is that when i think about is oftentimes was missing as a framework in a row map and some infrastructure for how you get to where you're trying to go as we speak and you mentioned it earlier sue the met council was rolling out  twenty forty accompanied by a fair housing and its fair housing and equity assessment to that will form about where those are caps are and where there's possibilities for different kinds of investments i think a platform and a framework for beginning to test our practice and i want to just touch on the practice best practice piece because i don't know if there is our best practice at think about thirty percent of what we do is innovation and trial and error and discovery and there are about forty percent of what we do it's good practice we've learned enough to practice some things over because it gets a somewhere and we can get some platform around our principles basic practices but the rest has to be targeted and customers and then the last thirty percent you can claim office best practices those are things that we know we do them over and over and over in with the same ingredients in the same process we get the same results and we have to make room for or three of us if we're to make big changes the last piece that i would just add to this  because we have to do with community engagement what we have been this region now as a community engagement in pursuit trucks like this three years ago you can scan the region and you have people from different cultural geographic backgrounds and experiences coming together in coordinated way bringing that knowledge to the table in ways that they've never bothered before that didn't exist three years ago and so those things together a broad framework some practical tools and a way of being gauging in bringing people to the table in ways that have traditionally been under represented and disconnected our guests in a way don't figure out how to tap that and maximize it we would have lost a huge opportunity i think to your question about best practices given what i said about best practices i think every every time we visualize we've vision should vision together anytime we plan we should plan together so people should be engaged early people should not just be engaged for input people should be engaged to a business as will so if i'm engaged why not position me so that the businesses that  tell me i have one or two more questions and then mainly what i'd like to know is and i think you've touched on it because i like to and and an optimistic moment because i think we are more inspired to act when we see opportunity and we see hope and i do see hope i see hope in the leadership of the three of you representing many many many people and organizations behind you but just you know you know why don't we just start with bill and go on down the line just what gives you hope and what do you hope to see five years from now in this community because what i thought when i what gives me hope is we were talking before on thursday we've got a group of large employers that probably represent i don't know thirty forty thousand jobs in the metro the c e o s are close to see showing up to talk about how are we going to move the needle how are we going to create jobs and how are we going to make sure we fill those jobs with with in a way that leverage is the entire breath of the metro that gives me hope because i think it's i think we've diagnosed the problem to death and i think everybody's at least a lot of us are pretty comfortable that we know the problem the question what are we going to do to move the needle so that's what gives me hope and i hope one of things we're trying to do is to actually track our progress as a group so where we starting from where do we want to be in addressing equity because it's the air she breathes and so that is so cool and then what's so cool with her leadership and with the leadership of the mc council also sue is that you know people have to get out of their lanes you know before it's like oh we got an elected school board let's not bother that all we've got to make council let's just stick with that we cannot address these issues if we stay on our lands because the problems are in one single lane and ultimately the thing that gives  greatest hope and wakes me up every morning iraq's me to sleep at night are the five hundred and fifty six resource poor brown and black families that have committed to a college bound for object to reach for their children and a different life and they are i mean many of them are saying they no longer want to be perennial recipients of social services but they want to be determinants of their own destiny and i think they're getting to a place where they will make great partners and the more we understand that the better off we are in terms of trying to create a region where all prosperous the second piece is that out think we're caught up in a national  future the future is coming right at us and the space in between is getting smaller and smaller every day and that inspires me because sometimes we need to be bombed and i think we're in places now and that stage is now where we're going to be doing a lot of bombing and we won't be able to ignore what the what the bigger environment around us is doing and is much is that bump in might was off a little i think it also moves us for and i'm encouraged by that thank you so much i just want to add a huge thank you coming out on a cold morning to you and what i love about what you said is you know what this challenge is a challenge that we can solve but it takes leadership and every person in this room is a leader you leave your own organizations your own work groups your own cities and your counties and your businesses and it really is a personal commitment to this that will allow us to succeed as a region so thank you for being personally committed and for coming out today so let's give them a huge  and i forgot to think one really important group at the beginning today analysis staff at the metropolitan council who do a phenomenal job so thank you to the staff we have bright dedicated people and i know they feel is urgently as i do about this issue and it takes a sense of personal leadership and urgency for us as a community to really  we have with you today up at the desk she leave if you didn't or go to our website to get it as well and thanks for being a part of a region and our leadership