Hi this is Rob Johnson. I'm the president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and thank you for joining us here for InetLive. Today we're here to talk about what we call the paralysis from above. The COP26 meetings and beyond and particularly with a focus on the future of the developing countries. I'm very concerned myself as I read about COP26 where several hundred energy lobbyists are allowed to attend and some of the ministers from the global south were not allowed. I'm very concerned though I have faith that the science and technology is there that we will not be able to realize that unless we have a new vision of the common good and the systems of governance that are there to which my call facilitated. I did a podcast with a Republican from the Bush administration the other day named Glenn Harbert. He's writing a new book it's called Walls and Bridges and how if we continue to allow this plutocratic overwhelming of governance and if we stifle international collaboration that's necessary in his view things will degenerate and the question metaphorically is how do we build that bridge over troubled waters that Simon and Garfunkel once spoke of. Today I have with me three people who are extraordinarily aware and attentive. I've had the good fortune of making a podcast with each of them before. Richard Kozel Wright who is the director of UNCTAD's Globalization and Development Strategies. He's an economist PhD in economics from University of Cambridge and has I believe attended some of the COP26 meetings in Glasgow is my understanding. Moed Barlow if you were an economist you would call her a liquid asset. She's a water warrior author political activist a dynamo she's written wonderful books about what's not happened or what needs to happen with respect to water but she's working on how would I say waste to let us see that the sun is rising rather than heading over the horizon. Patrick Bond who I recently made a podcast with he's from the University of Johannesburg department of sociology and he's done all kinds of work he's based in South Africa he's done all kinds of work on the fossil fuel industry stranded assets north south issues the political economy of what you might call obstacles to the kind of transformation that our global society will need to survive. I want to thank you all for being here I guess I'll give you a couple of bullet point questions to frame things what is causing the paralysis how do we get green energy finance in the developing countries how do we develop the global south without the use of fossil fuels and a number of other questions how does climate change endanger the clean water that Rod you have been advocating we're warning us is at risk and how can economics and how can society respond. We'll begin the process today I guess with some speeches or some opening statements I should say of eight to ten minutes beginning with Richard then Patrick and Maude and then we'll have time for a discussion with Q&A of or first a discussion among the panelists and then Q&A with the audience I would alert those in the audience that we do have a Q&A panel you can submit your questions on the chat and then we will we will address them there in the last phase but I want to thank all the panelists for joining me I also was very inspired by George Mombiel's recent writings at The Guardian and I want to pay tribute to him to Naomi Klein and her brother Seth and other people that I continue to learn from. Any rate Richard why don't you begin and let us know what you think happened what you think didn't happen what you think needs to happen. Yeah thanks a lot Rob for that I mean I was at the COP at the second week of the COP I have to say it was the first time I had been to a COP so this was a novel experience for me even though I followed it from a distance and still trying to weigh up the details of what happened that may be a fool's game I think in a way it seems to me that that you know much like Kurosawa's film Rashomon different people have very different interpretations depending on how they were looking at the at the process but I mean I guess there was a kind of loose consensus that between the between the breakdown of Copenhagen and the euphoria of Paris this seems people seem to think this was the the best possible outcome under the circumstances but the problem is that the circumstances are not very good and they they've become significantly worse under over the last decade as as you know climate scientists have become much more attuned to the kinds of problems that that we face from pumping more and more carbon into into the atmosphere and more alarmist about the lack of action in response to what they have known and I guess the IPCC before they came out over the summer before the the conference many people hope would be a real wake-up call and and I guess it wasn't really from my point of view I mean I was surprised about about the lack of progress that was made during the conference and I think I would I mean there's a certain context I think for that that goes beyond the the climate crisis itself and you've got to put that into some sort of context one of those of course is the failure to make a significant policy correction after the global financial crisis we all expected to see some significant changes in terms of policy and politics after the global financial crisis and it it didn't it didn't really happen and as a part as a consequence of that we've had a decade in which political and economic divisions have been growing and trust in governments and government governmental processes has been has been diminishing significantly and and I think the covid crisis which has opened up some important new avenues of thinking has has added a layer of ambiguity we don't really know where we're going as a consequence of the of the covid crisis and the reaction of governments to that some of which has been very positive some of which have been quite alarming in terms of in terms of of the response you know and so framing in against that backdrop framing the the meeting in Glasgow as the kind of last best hope for the planet was kind of setting up the conference I think which is how it was described by the host I think was setting up the conference for for a certain amount of of failure and in practice as far as with my interpretation is that most of the outcome was essentially kicking that kicking the can down the road to Egypt next year and there are two kind of big worries that are two two big issues that make me worried about what will happen in in in Egypt next year from from the kind of perspective that we have and here in UNCTAD and the first kind of issue that I mean shocked me to a little bit is just how little the climate challenge is understood as a development challenge and a development challenge understood as a transformative problem not a technocratic problem and I just find it quite shocking that that the development dimension of the climate challenge is is is largely absent and I think the other big issue that again has been apparent to us for some time is the erosion of multilateralism is the framing of the collective the kind of framing of collective action in the context of the interdependent world that we that we currently live in and I think while advanced economies were desperate to kind of find villains in the story in China and Russia and India when you think of it in these when you pose it in the context of these two big issues you know it's the advanced economies that I think we need to turn the spotlight on in understanding the current situation get their attitudes and their actions as the countries that are most responsible for the climate problem itself and I think there are there were three things that struck me and and I kind of leave it here that kind of shocked me in a way in terms of the way the nature of the discussion in Glasgow that follow from turning the spotlight on the advanced economies the first one is the way in which they're desperately trying to dilute the notion of common but differentiated responsibility which is the way in which the the the collective the response the collective response to the climate challenge should be framed they want to talk about shared responsibility not common but differentiated responsibilities the second what the second one issue I think there is the unwillingness to take regulatory action against corporate interests which are the both the main the the principal actors behind carbon emissions and the and of course the principal beneficiaries from that carbon-led growth regime and a consequence I think of those two things the third point is this kind of resort to magical thinking that we hear a kind of neoliberal variant of magical thinking in which getting prices right discovering the neck that the the the new technology that will remove carbon from the atmosphere and putting our faith in big finance is is the is the kind of way in which we think about meeting this challenge and and we got a sense of that in the day on financing the climate challenge when when as you know Rob you know large asset managers and and and bang said they've got 130 trillion dollars in store to deal with the problem of course politicians were delighted with that kind of talk because it seemed to let them off the hook around the big issue that developing countries in particular worry about which is mobilizing the resources to deal with the the climate challenge and of course you know there isn't 130 trillion dollars uh in in in uh in these in these institutions to somehow magic to deal with the the climate crisis so so you know I was yeah I mean I was looking looking out from my perspective a kind of more development perspective I was not encouraged by the way in which the uh the the discourse was framed or ultimately the kind of outcomes that were achieved well thank you Richard uh I a dear friend of mine who works in the public relations realm said to me that when he finished this what he was in Glasgow and he said I just sing this old rhythm in blue song what you see is what you get and then he said uh and it's this is 26 cops he said it wasn't 26 cops it was cops and robbers and he was very very frustrated that we weren't going to where we had to go and I know a number of writers have said why are we not talking about leaving fossil fuel in the ground why are we even flirting with compensating or subsidizing these stranded assets Patrick you know I think you know we should be talking we should be much more worried about state capture than we are about carbon capture when it comes to addressing this problem because in a world where many of the advanced economy states are captured it's very different to get a constructive form of multilateralism to deal with these kinds of problems I mean that's it's a it's a kind of mercantilist world that emerges out of that and we're not going to solve the climate crisis in a mercantilist world that's that's quite clear to me that's right Patrick you're very sensitive to all of these realms you've shared with me all kinds of different perspectives I don't want to get in the way what are you thinking well I'm going to just pick up where Richard left off I've known Richard a little bit and the best of multilateralism I think is in his unctad unit that for example put the arguments for a global green deal together and the despair that I hear in Richard and the way you framed it Rob and the sort of paralysis from above does suggest that Greta Thunberg was not exaggerating in saying this is blah blah blah right and her objective is to fire up the base to get the youth ready because it's future generations on and on that have to intensify these battles but let me take just a step back to say on about six levels I think this paralysis above if I'm allowed to just drill down from from where Richard is left off really does compel us at the base and especially I'm in Johannesburg the most unequal city in the world with the most extreme contradictions in excessive use and we got a special 8.5 billion dollar climate financing deal it under more scrutiny really does fall apart because instead of decarbonization and moving from coal the head of the agency getting that is intending to move from coal to methane which will amplify many of these problems and lock in a great deal of unburnable and stranded assets on we're having a big fight at the moment here over shell trying to explore for methane offshore the six points the failure to cut emissions sufficiently and fairly and to do so for example bringing in the number one polluter in the world is the pentagon bringing in military bringing in maritime bringing in air now these are problems with Paris and I think we're at 2.7 in these pledges but these pledges are voluntary without binding systems accountability mechanisms punishments of a if a Donald Trump walks out second to transition gracefully to make sure that the working class is poor and working people in communities and the workers in carbon intensive industries that's energy it's transport it's it's agriculture construction and urbanization processes it's production systems it's consumption and disposal all of these areas that we have to radically transform have have workers and communities that will be hurt and we haven't yet heard from the elites any real indication of ways to deal with it which then prevents us from having a good coalition of forces to solve the problem third to to bring in all of the other sites where the injustices of climate are explicit for racial justice north south justice the indigenous people have been such inspiring leaders on so many fronts youth communities and to get formal rights for nature right a mod is the guru of this for climate migrants and refugees for for future generations to to really install core values in a global multilateral system of power that can enforce those rights and then a fourth to get the technology into global public good form so we've instead of as with this week in the wto which was meant to to look at the let me call it a parted vaccine system in which intellectual property held by big pharma corps massively subsidized by global north has prevented us from in most of this continent getting above about 7% vaccination rates hence the conditions for an omicron variant with all the mutations these are the sorts of things that really reflect on the utter failure the moral failure the political failure of these elites and the same is true for transferring technology that would be very important for for climate for solar for for wind power an old manner of other technologies and instead what as Richard was hinting at the fantasy world includes the false solutions of all sorts of let me call them sort of biotech and artificial intelligence and you know the genetic modified approaches to trying to sequester in ways that are entirely unproven and very difficult or to add nuclear back in and also when we have green economies to address the the extractivist economy a fifth point is to leave the fossil fuels underground really declare these unburnable assets make the financial managers the lenders the investors take that haircut as well rob I'm going to defer to you because you know that's that's where weakening that extraordinary arrogance of a Mark Carney for example saying I've got 130 trillion they just want profits right and they're not ready to take this kind of hit when they shouldn't have been making these these investments in the first place and and finally six to be most important probably for our discussion what would be the fair financing we know that the let me call a privatization of the air the selling of the right to pollute through carbon markets you know originally from Los Angeles in in sulfur markets in the early 90s under George W. Bush H. W. Bush these haven't worked I mean we've now seen that you push up the carbon price in a manner that looks impressive it's at about $90 per ton price you can go and buy the right to pollute there but actually most of the world that's under about 22 percent carbon pricing is way low in this country 42 cents per ton what should it be well Donald Trump said $1 per ton Joe Biden says $51 the IMF when it calculates the implicit subsidies right the 5.9 trillion they're a little better $60 a ton Europe about 90 but the new research says really the damage being done the planetary threat puts this carbon price the social cost of carbon at $3,000 a ton which in turn means these markets aren't working and they're financial speculative in character they always crash when the when the financial bubbles crash but it means a carbon overload and overdose by many of us me in the global north in Johannesburg but we need to acknowledge a climate debt exactly what Richard said that the special responsibilities the polluter pays principle a very simple principle that helps to correct neoliberal economics to internalize extra externalities to me that's where the better inside negotiators were trying to put loss and damage back of course it's loss and damage because of the massive hits especially that the global south has because it's not insured about 4 percent insured compared to the north 60 percent but as a last point we need to bring in climate debt in other ways and really it's going to be not just the loss and damage paying for what the north has done but also it's going to be the adaptation costs and making these the sites african rural areas or our cities more resilient so that is going to be very heavy infrastructure but job creating infrastructure but it's also the compensation for the unused carbon space that our ability to be able to industrialize in africa limited now by the excesses and compensating there so compensating africa to leave fossil fuels underground is one step in that direction if you don't trust african governments which most of our civil society activists would say yeah we don't trust even the south african government to distribute the funds for a climate debt payment properly well we need basic income grants we need to find ways to basically incentivize countries equidor started this with the yasuni project but we have plenty of examples here and even that climate finance project was was part of this story incentivize countries to leave fossil fuels underground give them some concessions so that the revenues revenue streams hopefully they do get down to the people if not we can set up basic income grant mechanisms there's a good one in demiglia to me these are the sort of six ways i would judge there has been a bit more rhetoric in the cop about indigenous people gender youth but really the the money is where we can really tell whether the global elites are serious they put 10 trillion dollars into quantitative easing techniques last year they can't find 100 billion a year oxfam says we're only getting 18 billion a year in grant equivalent from that promise so i would sum up and say look this is really a conference of polluters and when greta thunberg says blah blah blah when our african groups pan african climate justice alliance and many of our you know lead intellectuals and activists say the the conference of polluters when it comes to egypt will follow exactly boris johnson's exclusionary strategy because it's a dictatorship the lcc regime and what we really need to do now is double our efforts to leave our fossil fuels underground to have a blockadia it's namely client puts it and really to make sure that if things like climate sanctions come up with a carbon border adjustment mechanism then we begin to really put pressure to make sure there's justice in that those would be some of the ways i would conclude with richard that this was a terrible failure and further delegitimizes a multilateralism led by neoliberals and the fossil fuel industry and big corporates thank you patrick we'll come back to you in a few minutes when we have the panel interaction but i'd like to let mod uh speak mod uh i think there are many dimensions one just you're an observer of the political economy and the common good your focus has been on water water may be at greater risk in light of the issues related to fossil fuels i want i just want to give you the whiteboard and ask you what are you seeing what worries you and what would you like to see all right well first of all rob thank you very much for inviting me on this panel to be with my dear old friend patrick it's just lovely to see you why do we leave all those years and to meet my new friend richard this is just terrific um i come to you from the unceded territory of the algonquin anishinaabe here in ottawa canada um water was not on the table uh officially at cop26 it never is there is usually a unesco uh event that happens it talks about it i spoke at the one in paris and of someone who works with me was in the audience and and as i spoke she heard people say hearing saying socialist socialist it was quite funny um so uh but water the water is generally seen as a subset when people talk about climate they're talking about carbon emissions and then they see water as being impacted by that which of course is true uh with melting glaciers and with the warming of the atmosphere is the warming of the waters which means they evaporate more quickly thirsty forests thirsty farms need more water we know that but it as as much as that is true the way we are polluting diverting damning mismanaging the world's water uh is is one of the major causes of the climate crisis and watershed protection and restoration is one of the major solutions to it and and so this has been a long-standing uh position of mine um so that you usually simply can't uh disconnect them um but it's very much water is very much impacted by something that's coming out of both cop not officially so far but out of the many discussions around biodiversity and it's called nature-based solutions at first blush it's very exciting and lots of people are talking about it in a very positive way it's the recognition that while we are dealing with the carbon crisis and and getting those greenhouse gas emissions and down to zero um we have to protect and restore those uh other areas of nature that that are going to help us with both carbon sinks and just the the local hydrologic cycle so protection and restoration of of watersheds wetlands forests and soil and the whole move to regenerative farming and how much that is understood to be part of the solution um and the whole concept of 30 by 30 by by 2030 that 30 percent of of the world will be will have biodiversity absolutely protected and the oceans off off the the coast of countries will be will be protected and this is key to fighting uh uh climate change the climate crisis however the i i fear that the um nature-based solutions has been absconded with as often happens um by corporate interests uh and move move away because we're not talking about the concept of capitalism we're not talking about the structure of economic globalization with its free trade agreements and with its privatization and its deregulation and a continued faith and insistence that the market makes the decisions i mean i will remind us that of the hundred largest economies in the world 69 are still transnational corporations and 31 are countries so we are still very much boxed into that and if i have a critique of some of the young climate activists and i love them and work with them it is that a lot of them just don't they don't know that part of it because they weren't there for the struggles against uh economic globalization and and the and the you know the market deciding everything um and biodiversity is being reinvented basically as a as a market model in other words a nature nature is now called natural asset um ecosystems are ecosystem services so you can actually put a dollar figure on what that lake is giving to the the economy or what that forest is of course the huge clear problem with that is if something comes along and can make more money from cutting shutting down that cutting down that forest well if you brought it into the market economy that's where it's going to have to compete the whole concept of biodiversity offsets we know about carbon offsets and as patrick said how wrong headed and dangerous they are but uh nevertheless we're now talking about wall street has biodiversity offsets and biodiversity funding i don't know if you know about the das gupta report he's a senior economist in great britain and he tabled a report that was highly touted prince charles was there and attenborough was there and everybody was there and basically attenborough said well it shows that it's going to be economists and not ecologists who save us because and he met that in a good way what das gupta and others are saying is don't touch the market economy it's untouchable so what we have to do is find a way to protect water and nature within within that economy and if you want to see a very good um critique of the das gupta report i'd send you to um green finance observatory it's a fine um uh institute in in europe that's doing really important work now at cop 26 um of course as we know when patrick and both patrick and richard have alluded to there was the glasgow financial alliance which is banks asset managers uh pension insurance funds and so on and this has been mentioned they pledged 130 trillion dollars towards nature-based solutions basically they want however they're very clear that they want the imf and the world bank to back them up they're not putting money into anything that's that's going to lose money and of course uh they'll they'll do this until core carbon and re reforestation offset offsets start to make money to make money because as patrick has said they're clearly not in here for any other reason um indigenous groups are understandably deeply concerned about big conservation organizations like nature conservancy which by the way is promoting uh clearly promoting water markets as the solution to the global crime climate crisis uh or the water crisis i mean in australia they separated the water from the land and allow farmers and others to sell their license that they own it and sell it for profit um and of course it just set off this crazy situation where the the price of water just went skyrocketed because of course the big the big farm the businesses moved in on the small farmers then the international investors and so on and the government totally lost control but this is something that is being promoted in the name of nature-based solutions this this market economy and in the name of conservation indigenous peoples local peoples people whose whose people have been there for centuries but maybe don't have title to this land because it's traditional land are being moved off in the in the name of biodiversity and nature-based solutions and we're seeing it in the whole issue of the new the latest on water futures the chicago mercantile exchange several months ago has opened up bidding water water futures uh in california basically bidding on drought so you're no longer buying the actual water you're buying the water asset and you're bidding you're betting on the fact that the drought is going to continue to get worse which i can assure you in california it is and you just hold on to those assets until um as such time you can make some some more profit from them they have the nerve to to put this language out and they're they're going to help serve water this is how how they're going to do this um so it's a it's deeply concerning and water gets water gets connected and committed into this new system nature-based solutions was so which is this is a good thing was so controversial at cop that they left the language out at the end and put in the language of biodiversity restoration so i want us to be very clear i think when we're talking about other aspects of the climate crisis and how how we as patrick has said so repeatedly we have to challenge the fundamental premises of capitalism or we're not going to get out of this i would give you i would want to leave you with some hope because i just wrote a book on hope called is coming out in march called still hopeful lessons from a lifetime of activism and the signs of hope that i see is that there is some real recognition uh a real there's a real fight back happening around the the the profound underlying uh realities that we're dealing with and i was really pleased to see greenpeace international play a very strong role at cop 26 on on naming this biodiversity sale this this you know the marketization of nature and really beginning to to see within the environmental uh even the big environmental movements of a reality that we can't fight for for one thing without fighting for the other and i just end by saying that we started a project in canada about 12 years ago called blue communities we had a right wing government that was saying to municipalities if you want to upgrade your water infrastructure if you want federal funding you have to have a public private partnership we won't give you money unless it's supposed to exactly what the world bank did with countries in the global south you won't get funding from us unless you move to a private corporation and we've been fighting those those all over the world well we set this up in canada we launched a blue communities project where municipality had to pledge to become a blue community it had to pledge to protect and promote water as a human right to keep it as public trust so no privatization and where there's clean water coming out of the tap to to ban phase out bottled water and to promote public clean public water in there in there with their public which just took off like wildfire in canada and we were getting municipalities basically saying to the harbour government we're taking a stand here it was a positive thing then it started to spread to europe and now other other cities and and hopefully we're hoping it's going to start to to move in a different way in the global south but we now have paris and berlin los angeles montreal vancouver a number of major cities have declared that they're never going to privatize water again in some cases paris and berlin having both privatized their water and the good news from all of this is there are about 25 million people now living in blue community cities and municipalities that understand that to protect water you have to keep it in public hands you it doesn't mean they do a good job obviously we know governments often don't but we you the the worst combination is bad government and big corporations coming in to run this stuff for bad governments we have the right to good government we have the right to demand um access and understanding and democratic oversight of these water sources who's getting access to them what are they doing that this must be limited there must be public accountability and you're not going to be able to deal with the water part of the crisis or any part of the crisis unless we have um true democratic and community control um and just to say is a a really positive thing because i wrote a book on hopes so i'm filled with hope that there are now 337 cities in the world towns and cities in the world it's being followed by transnational institute that tried privatization of their water services realized it was a terrible mistake and have brought it back under public management so this is a live fight i call it a mighty contest around a planet that is is literally running out of clean water when we see the stats it's like the demand is going straight up and the supply is going straight down we absolutely have to see this as a it's its own crisis within the climate crisis and we have to keep it in public hands and i would say it's ongoing you've got the water trading you've got bottled water you've got still got private public private partnerships you've now got this water speculation but we have a powerful movement that is saying no to all of this and has really really um uh manifested itself i mean there were canadian municipalities turning down good public good money from the federal government because they were going to hold on to a public water system because they're their citizens said so so i i want us to be hopeful that we're that we're going to see this thing in its entirety and understand that we can't deal with the climate crisis just by dealing with the carbon issue it has to be the the economy moving to a doughnut economy understanding the danger of the unlimited growth and what it's done to our planet and to increase the inequality of our people well thank you i uh recall when you were telling me about your book still hope forthcoming book uh that i was very encouraged and it reminded me that the word courage comes from the roots your heart and telling your story of your age and to encourage is what you seem to be doing while being fierce in diagnosis so i'm i'm grateful i'm grateful for what not just what you see but the way you're teaching us to evolve you uh richard you're a new friend there's two old friends i'd like to see all of you how would i say ask each other questions as you're exploring but let me just add i'm seeing something that's hopeful which is that people can see that this is a problem that's not going away so the urgency is being recognized the evasiveness the refractory nature of a plutocratic political economy the complications of globalization and perhaps for the people who were earnest but believed in the market the pervasiveness of externalities now meaning this climate is not something that's a commodity it's something that anybody's action affects us all so i i look at all of this and wit made me feel a little bit like Nina Simone in singing i ain't got no is the fear that the despair arises if there isn't progress it's going to facilitate authoritarian rule ultimately but seen it or excuse me Nina Simone comes back in her last verse of that song and the name of the book the song is i ain't got no i got life i got my arms i got my hands i got my fingers i got my legs i got my feet got my toes i got my liver i got my blood i got life i got my life and so you bring life and illumination to this all these resistances are there what are the next steps and i'm gonna i'm gonna let i'm gonna let let's have a free for all here for 15 minutes where you talk to each other i'll be quiet Patrick why don't you start may i start i i have questions for both my dear friends Richard you watch um global power politics as well as anyone in your assessment of the way your arguments move in through aunt ed reports but the lobbying you do the alliances you make is it going anywhere or are we in a period now that the united states is back in the game ironically perhaps that that corporate neoliberal influence from us state department the kind of people like who is it Todd stern who said yeah we put the carbon up there but as for recognizing our duty for climate reparations i just categorically reject that so i'm asking you for a balance of forces of where specifically your ability to make great arguments is it catching and then mod you really worked i think better than anyone i've ever met on global movement building the water warriors you are here in janisburg helping to have a revolt against suez and and you're remarkable and you're in bolivia and you're really all over this book i can't wait to see i hope it documents all this but you know for water warriors maybe for via campasino the world peasant movement excellent global linkages and not just networks but but movements were were built why haven't we done that so well with climate we've had a climate action a climate justice two different ways of seeing things but within climate justice we haven't really brought in labor yet we've had all kinds of you know minor disputes and you know distinctions funders not really being particularly helpful can't we do something better now that we desperately need more unity what do you think mod from below and maybe richard from above we'll first reach you i'll start from above um i mean following up from robs musical direction i mean i think some famous band said we can't always get what we want but if we try sometimes we just might find we got we get what we need and what we i guess what we need at least from our point of view patrick is you know we need a huge investment push into both adept we can't solve either the adaptation or the mitigation problem simply by putting a million people on the street i mean this is where i have a certain adverse reaction to the blah blah blah rhetoric because you know transforming the energy system is a huge investment challenge it's a huge investment challenge and there are huge vested interests behind the current energy system which is the source of the problem and and we need the state we need states i think the state is the one institution we have for all its faults and for all the problems that i talked about at the beginning we have to make sure the you know public action public investment is is captured by a progressive agenda again to be able to make these kind of transformative changes and and that's true i think at the national level and it's certainly true at the multilateral level because you know investments on this scale also need to be coordinated across countries and developing and and what we've learned from the if we've learned anything from the COVID-19 shock we've learned that developing countries are developing countries still despite all the talk that somehow they've all graduated into some higher status because the constraints on their policy the constraints on their fiscal space the constraints on their technological upgrading remain profound and and highly skewed because of the structure of the international division of labor and the governance of international markets by increasingly large multinational multilateral corporations concentration is in the future of the hyperglobalized world and that's and you know and this is where you know the frustration i understand comes from but i think building a positive narrative around the mobilization of public resources for the kind of productive investments in adaptation and and mitigation i think is the way in which we have to go in terms of accounting narrative and mobilizing the kind of resources political and economic to put that narrative into practice i think that you know i i do i do get slightly frustrated at times by the activists can you say more i mean we appreciate the energy because in the rest of the cop i mean it's it's it's not it's hardly an exciting place and the real energy and the real determination is there but we need that narrative and we need an appreciation of the of the vehicles that can make these kinds of changes if we're going to make progress and and you know that's that's the focus i think around our work on the global green new deal um um but it's a challenge it's a real it's a real challenge i think well patrick i'd like to send those questions back to you too because i think you'd have really interesting answers to both of them and i think we all three wanted to to speak to this uh on the on the building a climate justice movement i think everything's been harder to build um on the progressive front since 9 11 i don't know if you remember that we were on such a role i mean i've got a section in the book called chasing the wto and i was you know all the places that we were at we were really building we were really building a an international movement that could easily around economic globalization that could easily have have have been gifted to to the climate movement and all of a sudden the security forces that came down on the world were so intense i was in doha cutter for the ministerial there just months after 9 11 and the security was unbelievable and there were only like a handful of us ngo's protesters whatever allowed in maybe a hundred of us from all over the world and they assigned us to the dumbest most disgusting hotels that don't deserve the name and and everybody had to pay the same amount but of course the pubas stayed at the 10 star whatever um and i remember being told by one of the security officials that we did we did really careful things i just put tape over our mouths you know we were we were careful we were there was you know careful uh and he said if you did this uh and it wasn't a wto here we put you down we put you in you know you'd be you'd be down in a in a in a prison somewhere and i i found it was from then on the the connection between potential terrorism and our movements got uh conflated and it's been a very very difficult um for us to i mean there was a there was a world bank protest being planned just before 9 11 in washington i was going to be there for the international formal globalization was going to be there for it um we had a teaching set up with hundreds of thousands of people are going to be on the street it's hard to put that it's hard to do that in the same way now um i would say and i to richard's point i i i i i i think it's very important for us to understand how difficult it's going to be the reality and i agree with you around the blah blah blah i think sometimes she said that on day two and i thought miss still two weeks and i it's an i i think the world regretted thundered but and what she's done but we also have to understand the kind of the complications you've been to india i'm sure all of you have or other places that are where laggards as as richard said um not you said that you said but the people were charging that that you know that and i thought that's just patently unfair and in fact i thought the chinese the head of the chinese delegation gave a brilliant statement say you don't know you don't even read the stuff we put it you don't know what we're doing back home you don't and we're not doing it for you we're doing it for our our people to come in here right whatever we're able to do but when you go into communities and there's no money and the coal is what you have there it's going to take a long it's going to take a long time that we all want and we have to understand that if we really think we have to think about we've got a certain lifestyle in in mind and we want exchange fossil fuels for something else well how many solar panels in the desert probably made in china with coal how many of those how many wind wind you know wind mills how many wind farms i mean how many it's mind boggling what you have to do if we're really going to maintain our current level of life we're in what people call bill william reese calls overshoot and if we don't deal with the overshoot issue if we don't deal with a system and an economy that's just built on unlimited growth and competition what we're going to replace one bad thing with another like we here in canada are really worried that the united states is just going to assume that all of our mighty rivers are to be damned so that we can happen they're already talking about a north american electricity grid biden's talking about american jobs save american jobs but when they want to talk about electricity it's a north american electrical grid and i that really makes me nervous because i i worry about that so i i really think we have to have a that that um deeper conversation and i would just end and i i want to hear from from from um from well everybody but from my friend that i visited a 99 year old friend just before she died by morgan and she was married to leban dr griffith morgan and he gave a speech when he was 89 at a anti walmart they kept walmart out of their town well frontario for years and he was on this panel and he gave his passionate speech and dropped dead right in front of everybody uh he gave us his boots on sort of things and the next day the newspaper had a picture of me and vying griff on the front page in a quote from the mayor now heaven is safe from walmart walmart which is really quite sweet but anyway when i visited her she said to me she held my hand and she said have you got a quiet mind and i said not particularly i'm looking for one and she said you'll have a quiet mind when you have faith that there's that others are doing things you don't even know about you can't even imagine or as rebecca solnott says progress isn't an army marching forward it's a crap scuttling sideways we don't know how we're going to get there but we have to have some faith that there's a commitment a human commitment and and that has to be fueled by the wise hope not false hope not optimism so i don't have to do anything but truly saying to yourself i'm overwhelmed when i'm overwhelmed i have to ask myself what's the next appropriate step to take and you take it well in that in that i mean because i think of you is leading our army you're a vanguard mod you're a heat seeking missile and you never you never stray you're not a scud you always find the spot so i'm a disappointed now we have to have this kind of retreat because actually it's the tree shakers like you who help the jam makers like richard and i guess my question is really and i ponder it because we never get it right what's the division of labor so that these fruits that are being shaken by climate justice movement by the youth and hopefully now by labor trying to figure out what would a just transition require so what kind of coordination inside outside what kind of division of labor richard do we need between mod and the tree shakers and and you and i hope they're jam makers but actually you didn't tell me if there were any and that's why actually i like greta thunberg her blah blah blah reminds the elites that they're not jam makers right or they're just not interested and they need deep legitimization we actually need to clear them out i'm very much into the blah blah blah richard i apologize present company accepted yeah i mean it's i mean it is what we think about a lot including in angkad i mean you know the the moment our moment of triumph right was of course the efforts to establish a new international economic order in the 1970s that you know angkad was the the kind of substantive backing for that and and and developing countries were very much uh it politically motivated to move that in in that direction and they there was a level of solidarity amongst developing countries at that point that that in fact moved things in a in a direction where there was a lot of hope i think more than that point amongst developing countries and economic circumstances were in the favor there but economies were were in a certain amount of disarray coming out of the of the weakening of the golden age that you know and distribution struggles within the advanced economies empowered to some extent developing we know and we know what happened right i mean we know that that alliance within the south eventually collapsed in the face of pressures from the advanced economies you know i think and and and when we're a long way we don't have that kind of solidarity in the developing world right now that i wish it was true but you know from an institution that was set up on the back of that we don't it doesn't exist at the moment and i think that you know the challenge then is to find what combination of uh countervailing forces can be put together in a progressive direction and clearly one of the things that we need to do as because we look at it from a country perspective is to bring in um the the role of organized labor and and to some extent i'm current in current even though labor is much weaker today than it was in the 70s you know there are parts of the labor movement that've clearly embraced the the notion of a just transition and the and the possibilities that does to marrying the issues around economic injustice with with with uh repairing the the planner and so i mean there are i think there are real positives to be taken from that uh the role of civil society as you you know as you embrace it Patrick is part of the energizing alliance that we need of that there's there's no doubt so i mean i mean there are you know it is very much you know Gramsci's uh pessimism of the mind optimism of the quill i think but there are signs i think and and our work on the global green new deal certainly suggests that that there are elements of the necessary alliance there that the jam makers if you like in your language Patrick that that that we just need to kind of find ways of of scaling up and and one of the ways that we think we need to do one of the ways to do that is to provide a very strong counter narrative to the neoliberal agenda which remains powerful i mean incredibly powerful and and and so you know strengthening that narrative emphasizing the importance of public investment public services uh public goods as the as the basis for an alternative sort of agenda i think i think is the way at least that we have some element of hope in terms of moving forward and we did have just the last point a very great victory even mod when you are in that sleazy hotel in doha the tree shakers had forced the jam makers to put an exemption on intellectual property for AIDS medicines that meant instead of costing a hundred thousand or ten thousand dollars a year they're free and seven million of my compatriots get it and we've actually raised life expectancy from 52 uh in 2005 to 65 just before covid richard that's the kind of merit good right the public good strategy and there there was that that alliance of really robust activists on the streets act up in the u.s and treatment action campaign and medicine song frontier oxfam and maybe rob that's why we're so grateful that inet is helping out a pollanian not just grumpsian but a pollanian double movement by working against the logic the logic above the movement of neoliberalism in the market and now with all of your great work and rob thanks so much for putting this together and all the things you do moving the anti neoliberal project where are we going with that rob you should have the last word all right uh well i'll fuse this with a question that appeared on the board a gentleman said i would love an elaboration of rob statement if there's no progress it could fill us facilitate more authoritarianism prior to seeing that i was preparing to share with you what i think is very important medicine and i will read you four quotes the proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce that arises from the merchant class therefore ought always to be listened to with great precaution second quote civil government so far it is instituted for the security of property is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor or of those who have some property against those who have none at all third avarice and injustice are always shortsighted and finally the government and an exclusive company emergence is perhaps the worst of all governments for any country whatsoever whatever excuse me not whatsoever now where did those four quotes come from if you're from this scottish man that names me that people who believe in markets talk about name adam smith from the book called the wealth of nations it's hiding in plain sight now when my the person raising the question about authoritarian rule we are taught that capitalism receives its moral groundedness from being embedded in a democracy when we commodify social design and enforcement when the scrutiny in the media is driven by the imperatives of advertisers when universities become dependent on money and can't teach people other than what you might call credentials we're in a very dangerous zone there's a wonderful book by a man i think his name gerald jumposki called love is letting go of fear i think this question that's asked about authoritarianism is that if you can't feel the legitimacy of governments if you are despairing for perhaps the end of life for your descendants when you get that afraid you resort to alternatives that are not healthy but you don't see any place at the end of the road what adam smith showed is now at a time where as marvin gay used to sing what's going on what's going on well we can kind of see what's going on and what marvin gay's third verse says is we got to find a way to bring some understanding here today that's what i net's trying to do that's why i asked the three of you to join me i thought you brought some understanding here today i i think you bring some understanding to all kinds of dimensions of life and how do i say there's another song when you're going to wake up when you're going to wake up and strengthen the things that remain we're getting our wake up call right now whether it's the pandemic whether it's climate and you people are rising to the challenge thank you for joining me and somebody's one other question i was thinking about cop 27 in egypt which is going to make it very hard for civil society to express itself on site are you concerned about that as well each of you final thoughts well i'll just start with not answering that but just correcting myself because i think the world of greater thumb birth so i just want to make sure that i'm not in any way suggesting that the movement particularly the movement of young people isn't fabulous and must stay and must grow i think my concern is that we we hold on to vision a lifestyle a particular lifestyle and think that we can exchange it it's there's if there's a criticism of the youth climate movement from me it's that i find it very centered on carbon and somehow the replacements are there and it's just a lack of will and i i think it's really complicated and it's that it's that place between complication and i was encouraged at cop 26 because i heard people up on the podium who were in power who said things i've never heard them say before how i just want to say i don't think the world has ever ever ever been more ready to take action with the information we have with the scientific knowledge we have with the communication we have we have to move forward and that's our and it includes powerful youth movements just on Egypt very cool i mean i think i mean you know developing countries are phenomenally frustrated with the way in which the multilateral system operates and but positive i think the good thing is that and they've been frustrated for some time but they're moving from frustration and a fairly reactive politics to trying to fashion a more positive agenda i think across a number of issues of which the waiver that patrick talked about i think is a is one indication of of that movement from a kind of reactive to a more constructive agenda and i think actually Egypt the fact that it's being hosted in a developing country may well you know be a catalyst for that kind of thinking because i think i'm hoping the developing countries will be empowered by the fact that it is in a developing country and that in a sense this is their terrain and they know the problems better than anybody else because they're on the front line of these problems yeah patrick well i dispute a little bit that we should pay that much attention to the cop 27 it's going to be actually in sharmel shake a ridiculous resort and indeed because i know because pan african climate justice alliance is figuring out how its members in egypt and how we kind of have a meeting there in a couple of weeks how we actually prepare for this 11 months rolling out of pressure to if there is anybody inside to help fight the imperialists well we're there with them but i think because that's very unlikely because cc is a is a dictator and he's very much in league with the west what we will see is a thousand sharmel shakes all over the world and they'll be more and more tough and hopefully they go to embassies and consulates and and really show who the climate criminals are but they're also engaged in blockadia and i think that's why i'll just teach you those last two words i'm sure i'm sure mod remembers them because we say power to the people amanda away to and i think that's the only way forward amanda away to thanks there well i guess uh to finish the day maybe mick jagger's grinning because he heard him's song can't always get what you want but i went to philadelphia and i picked up a song called ain't no stopping us now we're on the move we got to groove and it's people like you did create it thank you all i look forward to following your work and the light you shed on everything so that we can't be stopped


Is that understanding Bill? Yeah, because it was an ordinance, it was a temporary ordinance that actually, you know, we set an expiration date. So the temporary ordinance expired. So even if we were to do a new temporary ordinance, we'd have to enact it following the ordinance enactment process for this coming summer. Or if you wanted to amend the permanent ordinance to expand it or however you wanted to do it, that would require the public hearing process. Either way, we're going to have two public hearings. This was really, I just want to introduce the topic and see where you're at because we've, you know, it's coming fast. Hopefully it's coming. The good weather is coming faster than we think. It's fun to think about it anyway. Is this language that you've given us tonight a good place to start? I believe we gave you the temporary ordinance language that you've enacted in the last two years. So if you wanted to do that, yes, that's fine. But if you wanted to, I think part of it is where do you want to go? What do you want to do? We can react language at the next meeting with the first public hearing. So if I wanted to make a motion that we move towards a permanent ordinance, then that would give staff direction. Or can we just all give a nod and the mayor tell you to go do that? Motion is always better. Okay, I do a motion that we do. Do a permanent ordinance, parklet ordinance. And this is just to be clear, this is separate from approving the temporary ordinance for this summer. Yes. Okay. So is there, it's a moving in that direction. Is that right? Yes. Okay. And okay, so there's a second from Jack about this particular thing, the idea of moving towards a permanent ordinance, allowing for parklets. Any further discussion from council? Jack. Thanks. I think that it was that it's really been successful. People have appreciated the opportunities. I don't really know whether we're going to be in a position to address every potential issue to have a permanent ordinance in effect for this coming season. I'd certainly be happy to work toward that, you know, starting with like doing a side by side comparison of what the permanent ordinance is. And because as I think the permanent ordinance is what's in effect right now because the temporary ordinance that we've adopted has been for a couple of years to suspend the permanent ordinance during the time that the temporary ordinance is in effect. But so I think Bill makes some excellent points about the structural integrity of parklets. I know that in years past when the ordinance was originally adopted, it had some maybe stricter limitations on the number of parking spaces that could be taken up, then maybe we think we want, give it a couple of years of experience with a more wide open rule. So I think we should be moving forward. Thank you. Cameron. I'm sorry, I was just raising my hand for Stephen Whitaker. Okay, Steve, go ahead. Yeah, I want to raise a couple issues. I raised back when the temporary ordinance was in place or being renewed that the city manager abused his discretion by granting parklet space in fire lanes. The the ordinance and the temporary ordinance was never, it was made for parking places, not fire lanes. And he granted permission to put to block a fire lane in the truck drivers. And I don't, I didn't see any, I didn't FOIA any feedback from the fire chief on that.  And then this is not just a renewal of the temporary because this grandfather is in anything he prior granted. And I read the proposed temporary ordinance and it grandfather's things in if he if he made a mistake already. So that's just really out of this is the kind of diligence that we've come to expect. So I just raise a real red flag here. And in the context of the downtown core master plan, having been reliant upon the parking garage. And now we need to it's not even in the budget to redo the downtown core master plan. We're forfeiting parking, you know, that we considered so sank or sank. I mean, we really need to do the downtown core master plan without the garage before we know whether it's smart to do a permanent parklet ordinance. So there's some things to chew on. Thanks. Thank you. Any other comments or questions on Donna's motion, which is I guess I'd like some clarification just to make sure I know what you're voting on. I said clarity was kind, but then I'm not clear. The motion was to pursue a permanent ordinance. And so I guess I'm are we talk? Are you talking about a permanent ordinance that would go into effect this summer? So we'd be amending the current ordinance to presumably to expand to at least the types of parking that we have now, not necessarily grandfathering assuming that they met, but that they would then meet the higher standards so that people would have to incur the costs of new construction for parklets for those that don't meet the standard. Now, or are you talking about working on a more permanent ordinance and at the same time re upping the temporary ordinance for this summer while we prepare the more permanent ordinance? So I guess for my motion, Bill, it would depend if you needed more time. If I guess I was pursuit wanting the staff to pursue the permanent ordinance and then the council to look at that and say, OK, it's achievable. Let's do it this year. Or, oh, no, we'll do the permanent next year and we'll do the temporary. But I guess I need to study the differences between the two. But meanwhile, I didn't want the work on the permanent one not to get done. Understand. I get I'll be frank here. I think the issue of the time is less about city staff drafting an ordinance and more about the users of the parklets. So I'm thinking about the business owners here. If if people that have had a temporary parklet and are expecting that again, this year have to now construct what I believe is in the thousands of dollars. I don't know exactly how much they cost. I think it depends on what you do, how fancy you make it. That you know, we might want to hear from them about that in terms of what that impact is and whether they can pull that together in time for this year or whether saying this is your last year at temporary, this is what the rules are going to be starting 2023. That gives people a year to plan and decide whether they want to continue it and know that they need to set money aside or whatever. So I'm actually, I think we can draft an ordinance and we can tweak it over a course of a couple hearings in terms of the city's end of it. I don't think it's that difficult. And some of the questions have been raised tonight. Certainly we would be, we could address. But the users might have a different perspective on it. Maybe my motion needs an addendum. To clarify here that we use the temporary ordinance this year while we work on a Pernum at one. And Jack's okay with that. Okay. Okay. So that's that also makes sense to me, particularly in terms of giving businesses time to plan and get financing together for a permanent Parklet, if that is what they want to do. Yeah, go ahead, Donna. But I do think if there's a, at least a little step or whatever, if there needs to be a step to make things safer, even if they aren't as safe as they ultimately would be, then I think that should be clear to people this year too, though, even if it's a temporary ordinance that we talked to them, the staff talk to them and encourage whatever additions that you feel would make it safer without within the reasonable ability of being temporary. Does that make sense? Sure. And I really don't want to belabor this, but there are very clear, I mean, federal highway and others have standards for these things that and these are on federal, at least State Street, Main Street, federal aid highways, I don't know about Langdon, that they would need to meet, you know, more permanent basis. So it includes all sorts of things. And we have all. So I would I would propose that if we that's where we'd want to go. So what, you know, whatever we can do this year to make them safer, of course. Yeah, fair enough. OK, any other comments from Council or the public? OK. All right. So there's been a motion and a second establishing the temporary ordinance for this summer and pursuing a more permanent one for the future. OK, any for the discussion? OK, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. OK, so that passes. Thank you, Bill, for getting us on the agenda. I think hopefully our businesses appreciate that as well, because I am looking forward to spending some time outside in a parklet, hopefully sometime this summer. And all right, so I think that is.  So we are on to Council reports and I'm going to start with Donna. I would like maybe it's more other business to talk about our March meetings. In January, I made a motion to have February meetings remote. And I do feel like we need to do that one more month. The numbers have started going down and that's great. We also just had February break. So and I want to I mean, again, I think it's. I prefer us all to be remote and I would like the mayor to participate and I feel like you really absolutely have to be. So I'd make the motion that we make the March meetings remote and then the last meeting in March assess what the data is and see if we can go forward to be in person. Sorry, you just made a motion. Is that we go remote for the March City Council meetings? The council. There's a motion and a second. To go remote for March. Other thoughts on that. From council or the public. Jack, go ahead. I think people know that I really prefer being in person and being remote. But but we've had some encouraging. Statistics the last couple of weeks and hopefully that continues. But it was.  And and and last week's case rates didn't make me think that the pandemic is necessarily over either. And so given the fact that there are people on the council with really. Serious and well founded concerns about about their health if they were to have to come back to meetings in person. I think it makes sense to go another month and reassess. OK, Vicki and Lane, go ahead. I was just thinking that maybe that's not fair to whoever's going to be new on the council because they won't get the experience of being able to sit in those chairs and and know what it's like. They'll just it just be another Zoom meeting for them. So I think for the new people. I think it would be good to have them and you actually are pretty far away from each other for the most part on the council. If you don't like breathe into each other's spaces. So but anyway, I just thought it would be better for new people. Thanks. OK, thank you. Any for thoughts on this? What a good. I just want to stand up for the folks that I mean, I can only participate by telephone, but some people can't even do that. And you're, you know, taking actions on consultant studies for the unhoused and your, you know, showers and rec center. I mean, you're disenfranchising folks by technology for your own comfort and we have air cleaners. We have social distancing. We have a public building that we're paying for. We should damn well use it. Thank you. OK, thank you. Any further comments on this? Jay, I guess I'll just add that as the short timer, I do feel a little bit uncomfortable even on somewhat of a small. I mean, not not disregarding how important it is, but I do feel uncomfortable making decisions for for somebody else. And so I'm wondering if it would be possible to at least establish that the first meeting in March would be would be remote. I can't remember exactly what that date would be, but then that would then give the opportunity to revisit the rest of the months. Meetings staying remote. Personally, I I absolutely support it 100 percent to commit to to to the first, you know, to to March, but think that, you know, there it might make sense to have a quick revisit as, you know, it with any new members of the with new members of the council. I'll just throw that in. Thanks. That's a great point. Go ahead, Donna. Well, it's just that if you have health reasons, they don't go away. And and it will be harder on new members. And I can make myself available again to talk to them on phone as I try to do with with new members and meet remote. But I feel the health reasons don't go away. And so for March, they're there. So I feel that it's not a matter of comfort. It's it's a matter of health for us and the people we're around. You know, what's possible, too, is that so even if we vote to go remote for March, you know, New Council comes in for their first meeting on March 9th. They could we could vote to. Yeah, to to go, you know, to be in person for the next week, like they can undo, you know, any decision that we make tonight, potentially, if there's a desire to. So so anyway, just I'm throwing that in for.  OK, any any other comments or questions on this? OK, so there's been a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. OK. All right, so we'll be remote in March unless the new council decides otherwise. OK, so thank you. Anything else, Donna? No, for my council report, I really appreciate Bill taking all the wax tonight. I felt like I didn't want to confuse things, except my little piece about savings past year. But thank you very, very, very much. You did extremely well, Bill. Appreciate it. And Cameron, likewise on your report for the task force and everybody vote on Tuesday, support the budget, support the bond, support the re-election of those council members who are already on the council. Thank you. OK, thank you. All right, Connor. I'll echo the gratitude for city staff. Really good presentation tonight and really thank everybody for coming out. Jay, it feels so hollow having the last meeting with you over Zoom. It's like a prison window where you want to push your hand up against a glass, right? So I really think hopefully we can maybe have a good send off for Jay in person at some point. You brought such a depth of knowledge to the council and really appreciate his service over the last couple of years here. But like Donna said, I hope everybody gets out in boats on Town Meeting Day and look forward to seeing everybody in March. Hopefully. Thanks, Jay. Go ahead. All right, I'm going to keep it quick. It's it's been an honor serving serving District Three. It's been an honor serving with all of you, even Lauren in absentia. I am incredibly thankful for all of you. Council and staff and. I've left very optimistic about our city hearing hearing the presentations from staff tonight and in particular, the the forward thinking and passionate words from my fellow current council members about the importance of not only the small bond, but about how we are thinking about and planning for our city and doing best, not just for the now, but for generations to come. And so I'm not going anywhere. I'm still I'm still I'll still live in downtown Mypulia and I'm still raising my kids here. And so but I'm left optimistic thinking knowing that we have the leadership that we have here. So thank you all very much. Thank you, Jennifer. Yeah, I mean, just like echoing what everybody else has said about staff tonight and I really this meeting felt really good. And it may be my last. I don't know. We won't know until everybody's done voting. And if I am not reelected, I have really, truly enjoy this experience understanding politics more and my neighbors more and how the city functions. And it's been a really great learning experience for my kids as well, which I didn't even think would be a thing. But they, you know, they listen and they're paying attention. And it's been really truly an honor. And if I do get voted to stay on, I look forward to all of the upcoming projects and sitting next to all of these lovely human beings that I've gotten to know over the course of winter. And I will be around as well. So thank you. Thank you, Jack. Thank you to probably just two things. I echo the comments that I've heard. Town meeting day is Tuesday. You still have a chance to vote by early voting before then. But if you're not there, we have volunteers ready to take your vote on election day. Please come out and vote and vote for for Donna, for Connor and for Jennifer. And my dear friend, Mayor Watson, and for all the budget items. And then the other thing I want to say is that we we had the vote to formally extend the contract of the city manager tonight. And I want to say that once again at this meeting, Bill demonstrated why we are so fortunate to have him as a city manager by his professionalism, his command of the vast array of facts of every aspect of city government and and the ethical way in which he conducts the business of the city. And I am very glad that we have been able to secure his services for for another four year contract. And I think the people of the city can be secure that the management of their government is in very good hands. And that's all I've got. Thank you. And so I've got a couple of things on my radar one. Well, first, Jay, I just want to say thank you so much for your time and dedication to the city. And I have appreciated working with you. But also I am up for reelection. And so I want to say in general, I've really appreciated working with all of you. And it's been just a delight. And I hope that I will see you here again on March 9th. And but particularly since Jay is leaving, I just want to make sure that we don't forget that Jay was appointed to the stormwater in utility committee.  And I think that's filled by Jim Condos. And so, Jay, if I'm not mistaken, you were willing to stay on that committee. But do you want to speak to that at all? Yeah, I'm willing to I'm willing to stay on for sure. Until, yeah, obviously, it sort of has to the committee itself has to establish an identity and figure out exactly what the representation should be. And I'm happy to be a part of it through that transition. And if that means I stay on it longer term as at large or some other capacity, that's fine. But or and then if it means otherwise, if it means that, yeah, the representation should be as it is. And I step off, then that's OK, too. So I'm happy to to be a part of the conversation to manage the transition. Lifetime appointment, man. Lifetime appointment. You're dreaming. You're dreaming, Connor. One possibility is that we can try to if there's an easy solution, we can try to just figure that out right now or we can put it on a future agenda to hash out or know that it needs to be on a future agenda. But or what do you think, Jay? I'll leave it to you to decide. I mean, it's it's going to be in your hands to decide it's a city committee.  So if you're if somebody else wants to step in or you want to however, you want to make it work. So to be fair, one of the things like the press, there is precedent for other committees where if a, you know, if an council member does not want to step on to a committee, then they can have their designee. So potentially you could be our designee. Donna, yeah. But just that the storm water is meeting next Friday. I think it's one to two, isn't it, Jay? I forget exactly. So we won't meet again to decide that before the storm water committee meets. And can he can we ask him to go ahead and attend? I'm attending for the M tick committee, but I'm not the council representative. So can we direct him to attend and he can get his feet wet? Well, sure. And then storm water. Well, well played. I'm sure that's exactly what you meant. So one possibility is that so, so Jay, if it makes sense, you could stay on for that meeting and then we could just consider because we'll need to go through the whole slate of who is on what committee is anyway, again. Of course. Yeah. So that's fine. That's fine by me. Like I said, I'm happy to be a designee for that first one. And we'll go from there, Jack. You had a hand up and I skipped you there. Go ahead. Oh, that's OK. I was just going to say the same thing you said, which is that committee appointments are one of the things on our March 9th agenda. So we can talk about that. And also I finished up without saying anything to Jay. Jay, it's been great working with you on the council and we'll we'll stay in touch in town. Of course. Yeah. OK, so I think that seems like an OK plan, team, unless folks have objections. OK, thank you again. Jay, for even just going to that one meeting, we appreciate it. And I also want to add that I have office hours this coming Sunday at 2 p.m. If anyone would like to join for that, they just need to email me and I will send them a link. And I'm hoping to do office hours on into the future after that. And so that's on going. And I think that is that is it for me. So thank you, everybody. John, Odom, go ahead. Oh, that's all I got. Oh, and and to be fair, if I may pull a little more out of you from that, if people have not requested a ballot at this point, should they or should they just plan on going into City Hall? Well, I mean, you know, you can request an early ballot any time that's early, right? If you want us to mail it to you at this point, you're taking a risk that it may not get to you in time. If you do have us mail you one, my strong advice would be not to mail it back and instead to drop it off. And there is the drop box in the back of City Hall that people are making great use of. OK, we don't stop by and vote, too. Right, people could stop in in person to vote early. Yeah. Great. All right. Thank you. Bill, go ahead. Thank you. First of all, I would like to a little curious how Council Member Casey knows so much about putting your hand up in a prison. Just look, I was never convicted. It's just just a thing. Thanks to Jay. It's really been great working with you and having our weekly phone calls and or sort of weekly phone calls. And you've really been a top notch Council Member very thorough. Appreciate it. It's been it's been really wonderful working with you to all of you up for election. Good luck to all the candidates running for election. Good luck to the voters. Please vote on all of these important issues. The more of you that turn out the better sense of the city we get on the budget, the bonds, the candidates and everything. So that's really helpful to all of us. And thank you to the city council for your continued confidence in me and our staff. And so I really look forward to continuing to serve all of you or most of you and the residents of my pillar, I do love the city. Appreciate the kind words about tonight. I really have to to pass that along to the staff if they did not provide me the information that I need to share. I wouldn't be able to do it. So, you know, I I talk, but it's really they're the ones that inform me. So thanks to all of them. And we'll see everybody Tuesday, I guess, on voting day. Thank you. And there's actually one more thing I want to say. Jay, as you're stepping off and Jennifer, if you don't end up back with us by March 9th, I I want your opinions. Um, if you have thoughts about any future topics, please, please stay in touch. OK, having said that, OK, good. OK, having said that, without objection, we will adjourn the meeting 9 58. All right, thanks, everybody. Have a good night, folks. Before 10. Good night, folks.


I'm thankful for my family and my friends in the community that I've created at Alabama. I'm most thankful for my friends and my supportive family. They have truly been the best. I know I wouldn't be where I am without the support of so many and so I'm definitely thankful for them, including my mom and my dad. I'm thankful for my family and all the opportunities I've had here at the University of Alabama. I'm thankful that I have the opportunity to get a great education at a school that I actually really love and I'm really happy, yeah. One of the things I'm really thankful for when it comes to the University of Alabama is our U8 community. Over half of our students come from all over the place so I'm so thankful that I've been able to be exposed to people from all over the world. Being a student here these past four years, those different experiences have just shaped my entire college experience and have made me the person that I am today. I'm really grateful to get to show people come to this campus, this beautiful place that I love so much and of course I'm thankful for the University of Alabama football team.