President Clinton to Mayors: Cities Are Back!

Cuomo Report "Compelling"

John Pionke

asolomon@usmayors.org

While addressing the 65th Annual Conference of the US Conference of Mayors President Clinton declared that "Cities are Back", citing economic recovery, lower crime statistics and better education as the evidence of his statement. In a speech given at the Fairmont Hotel before 300 plus mayors the President outlined a healthy future for America's cities and detailed a seven point plan to ensure their continued forward momentum. Here are portions of the Presidents remarks:

I always look forward to this meeting because I do believe America's most creative and gifted and effective public officials today are to be found among the mayors. I've always thought of you as friends and allies in doing America's work, and I've always thought that a lot of my job was to help you do your jobs better.

What a long way we have come. It wasn't so very long ago that huge numbers of Americans had just simply given up on the prospect of our cities. But as Secretary Cuomo's compelling report, The State of the Cities, proves, our cities are back.We've got the biggest economic resurgence in cities since World War II; the unemployment rate down by a third in our 50 largest cities; more downtowns coming back to life with sports and tourism and local business booming. We're taking back our streets from the worst ravages of crime. New waves of immigrants in our cities are making positive contributions with new energy and new businesses.

And because of your disciplined and creative leadership, the fiscal health of our cities is stronger than it has been in decades. Our cities are literally bursting with new ideas for reform that are actually changing people's lives.

I have seen what the empowerment zone has done in Detroit. I went to Toledo to see the oldest auto plant in America up and running and bursting at the seams with new employees, selling their products to Japan in large numbers. I have been to Boston where not a single child has been killed with a handgun in a year and a half. I know what the cities are doing, and I want America to know that the mayors of this country have literally changed the shared life of America in ways that affect not only our largest cities, but our smaller cities, and as I said, the relationship that is inexorably intertwined between the cities and the suburbs.

You have helped America come back. And I am grateful. But I also know, and you know, that we have much more to do. Today I would like to briefly discuss seven things that I think are important if our cities and, therefore, our country are to reach their full promise in the 21st century.

First, let's talk about extending the benefits of the economic recovery. Our national economic strategy changed dramatically in 1993. We went from trickle-down economics to what I call invest and growth reduce the deficit, but invest more in our people and technology and in the progress of people in the future, and open the world to trade in American products and services. This is clearly working. Our economy is the strongest in the world, the strongest it's been in a generation. America is now the world's number one exporter.

When I reached our historic bipartisan budget agreement with the leaders of Congress, they pledged to work with us to keep these initiatives going to expand the empowerment zones,the enterprise communities, the brownfields tax incentives. They also agreed to funds necessary to clean up 500 more toxic waste sites and to more than double the amount of investment in the community development financial institutions, to provide for urban transportation needs for people on welfare who must travel to new jobs, and to help people on welfare get more work.

Now, all these initiatives are essential to the health of our cities. They also agreed to enough funds to cover half of the 10 million children in America who have no health insurance. That will make a dramatic difference to those of you who have severe health costs that are unmet and unfunded in your cities.

On the tax side, dealing with the brownfields and the empowerment zones and the other tax incentives for the cities, the plans put together by the House and Senate committees simply do not live up to the explicit commitment of the budget agreement, and that is wrong.

Many in Congress do not share my enthusiasm for these programs. Many of them have never seen your reforms at work. Perhaps they cannot be blamed for not voting for what they don't know about. The truth is that that budget agreement passed by overwhelming margins of both parties in both Houses. I would think every member of Congress, without regard to party, would like to be known as a person who keeps his or her word. It is up to you to make sure that they have the chance to keep their word. Do not let Congress get out of the commitment they made on this issue.

We have to keep up with our fight against crime and violence. Crime has been going down for years and the strategy we put together of more police on the street, tougher punishment, fewer guns in the hands of criminals and more prevention programs to give young people a chance to say yes to a brighter future has been historically effective. We know we had the largest decline in crime in 36 years last year.

But a nationally publicized poll just last week asked the American people whether crime was going up or down; 25 percent said down and 60 percent said up. Why is that? Partly, it takes a while for public perception always to catch up with reality. Partly, it's that the local news still leads with the crime story every night. That's a problem for a lot of you and the image you're trying to fashion for your cities. Partly it's because America is a place with too much violence and too much crime even with all the progress we have made.

We have to finish the job of putting 100,000 police on the street. We have to continue to push for real juvenile justice legislation. We put a bill before the Congress that has more prosecutors, more probation officers, more after-school and other programs for at-risk young people. It's not very long on rhetoric; it's real long on results. It basically grew out of what I have seen working. We need a national bill which gives you the tools to save these kids lives. I want you to help me pass that kind of juvenile justice bill through the Congress, so you can save the children of your cities.

We have to finish putting 100,000 police on the streets. I want to increase that presence even more by getting police to live in the communities they serve. Today I am pleased to announce that over the coming year we will start an Officer Next Door program through HUD. It will make it possible for police officers and their families to buy HUD-owned single-family homes in our central cities at a 50 percent discount.

You have shown me how more police officers on our streets have made so many our neighborhoods feel like home again. Just imagine what it will be like when more police make those neighborhoods their homes again.

The third thing we have to do is to make sure we create jobs for the roughly 1 million people that have to move from welfare to work by the year 2000.

In the budget agreement, we got agreement to restore the most egregious cuts in aid to immigrants, which I thought were wrong the cuts to legal immigrants who come here, live by the rules and work hard, through no fault of their own become disabled. We are going to restore those cuts, and I will not sign the bill unless Congress keeps its commitment in the budget agreement to do that.

We have $600 billion through the Department of Transportation to help people on welfare travel to work, because there are a lot of cities in which right now there won't be jobs but there are workers.

I know a lot of you are making new partnerships with the private sector. Mayor Brown told me this morning the private sector here in San Francisco had pledged to him they would take 2,000 people from welfare to work on their own initiative. In this bill there is a new tax credit, very tightly drawn, that gives a 50-percent credit for up to $10,000 in wages for people who are hired from welfare to work. That also is in the budget agreement and must pass.

The fourth thing we need to do to make our cities places that anybody would be proud to call home is to make it easier for people to have homes in our cities. HOME OWNERSHIP is one of the most empowering things we can ever do for anyone. Our goal is to have more than two-thirds of the American people in their own homes by the year 2000 for the first time ever.

You and I know not enough homes are in our cities. In the last four years we've reduced FHA mortgage premiums three times, to lower the average closing cost on a new home by $1,200. That's made a lot of difference to a lot of young people, and I'm proud of that. Today, we're going to cut the premium another $200 for people if they buy homes in our central cities. This will bring the total reduction since we took office of closing costs to those families to $1,400.

We know there are many hard-working families who receive Section 8 assistance who are ready to assume the responsibility of owning their own homes, but they can't take the first step. HUD now has a very innovative program before the Congress that would allow those families to use their rent vouchers to help to buy a home. Today, I'm happy to announce that Freddie Mac is going to help us launch this HOME OWNERSHIP empowerment voucher initiative by financing up to 2,000 of these mortgages.

Together with the Officer Next-Door program, this represents almost $700 million in down payment toward our priority of strengthening our cities family by family, by helping more people buy a home in the cities of America. I hope you will support that as well.

The fifth thing we need to do is to make sure our schools work and all our children, no matter where they live, get the best education in the world. I know only a few mayors actually have any control over the school systems in your cities, but every mayor must be concerned about the quality of education in your cities. One of the main reasons families continue to leave cities is that the schools are not doing a good enough job. We have to make our schools work if we're going to bring them back.

We're working hard to connect every classroom in America to the Internet by the year 2000. It won't matter whether a child is living on a Native American reservation or an inner-city neighborhood in Los Angeles, or remote town in the Ozarks of North Arkansas they will all be able to get the same learning in the same way at the same time for the first time in history.

Secretary Riley and I are working to mobilize a million volunteers to make sure that by the year 2000 every 8-year-old, wherever he or she lives and whatever their native language is, can read independently by the 3rd grade. We're working to make sure that 100,000 teachers in America are certified as master teachers, so that in every school building in the country there will be at least one teacher that you know has had the finest training available and passed the most rigorous standards that can then be imparted to other teachers in the school building.

I spent a couple of hours with Mayor Daley and the people operating the Chicago school system. The Chicago school system used to be known as the school system that went on strike every year whether they needed to or not. Every year in the Chicago paper, when I served as governor and Jim Thompson was the governor and his child was a student in the schools, there would be a picture of little Samantha Thompson, who wouldn't be in school because the strike was going on. Now the Chicago schools are known for moving aggressively to stop social promotion, to raise performance, and the city will take over the schools that are failing and straighten them up. We can all do this.

The sixth thing we have to do is to deal with issues of public health. Let me say something especially about HIV and AIDS, because it grips so many of our cities, it costs so much money, but far more important, it costs so much in human lives and trauma. Last month, I issued a call to find an AIDS vaccine within the next 10 years. We have continued to dramatically increase the amount of money we're putting into research for that purpose alone, while having dramatic increases in care, prevention and other basic research. We can't stop until we find a cure to bring a permanent end to the epidemic, nor can we limit our efforts only to HIV and AIDS.

We have got to build up our public health infrastructures and we have to make sure that we have basic health services out there for all our children. One of the most important aspects of this new budget agreement is the funds it gives us to give health insurance to half the 10 million kids who don't have it. We need to keep going until every child in every community in America has health insurance coverage, and the people that are providing health care can get reimbursement so we can build a network to protect our kids to give them good health and to deal with the challenges that are bound to come to America's cities in the future.

The primary purpose of the President's Summit of Service that Mayor Rendell hosted in Philadelphia not very long ago was quite specific: it was to save every child in America; to give every child a safe place to grow up; every child the health care he or she needs; every child a decent education so they'll be able to support themselves when they get out of school; every child a mentor who needs it every single one a mentor, one-on-one, who needs it; and every child the chance to engage in citizen service.

Now, what's our job at the national level? An adequate education budget; a better health care effort; a crime program that will really work in the area of juvenile justice to give you the tools you need; and the work we do to help provide AmeriCorps volunteers that have done so much to help you fulfill your mission in city after city in America.

But you have to help us do that. That was not a one time public relations stunt for me. I agreed to do that President's Summit of Service because it had a very sharply defined mission, and because it did not let me off the hook and it did not let government off the hook. It said, we can't expect volunteers to replace what is the public responsibility in education, health care and public safety, but neither can you expect just that responsibility to change the lives of these children who are physically isolated.

What I want to say on race relations is that it is the cities that have the biggest stake in this endeavor. Today Hawaii is the only state in America that has no majority race. But no one who has ever been there doubts it is very much an American place, patriotic, upbeat and entrepreneurial. Within three or four years, California will have no majority race. Within 30 years, there will be no majority race in the country. Today, in Mayor Archer's home county, there are people from 146 different racial and ethnic groups.

We have a chance here to do something that has never been done in all of human history, since people first began together in tribes before there was a written history, and identified people who looked different from them and lived different from them as their potential enemies we have a chance to rewrite the rules of human evolution almost by building the world's first truly great multiracial, multiethnic democracy. It will have to be done in the cities where the people are.

The cities of America are bursting with excitement and success. There's hardly a one you can go to that just doesn't fill you with the human potential and connections that are being made. We have to make that the rule in America. We have to make that the order of the day. We have to make that the governing public philosophy of all our citizens. And if we do, our lives will be a lot more fun and a lot more interesting. Being a mayor will be even more exciting 10 years from now and 20 years from now and 30 years from now than it is today. None of it will happen unless we learn to live together, relishing, celebrating, loving our diversity, but being bound by things that are even more important.